Podcast appearances and mentions of marcus blankenship

In this episode of Codeish, Marcus Blankenship, a Senior Engineering Manager at Salesforce, is joined by Robert Blumen, a Lead DevOps Engineer at Salesforce. During their discussion, they take a deep dive into the theories that underpin human error and complex system failures and offer fresh perspectives on improving complex systems. Root cause analysis is the method of analyzing a failure after it occurs in an attempt to identify the cause. This method looks at the fundamental reasons that a failure occurs, particularly digging into issues such as processes, systems, designs, and chains of events. Complex system failures usually begin when a single component of the system fails, requiring nearby "nodes" (or other components in the system network) to take up the workload or obligation of the failed component. Complex system breakdowns are not limited to IT. They also exist in medicine, industrial accidents, shipping, and aeronautics. As Robert asserts: "In the case of IT, [systems breakdowns] mean people can't check their email, or can’t obtain services from a business. In other fields of medicine, maybe the patient dies, a ship capsizes, a plane crashes." The 5 WHYs The 5 WHYs root cause analysis is about truly getting to the bottom of a problem by asking “why” five levels deep. Using this method often uncovers an unexpected internal or process-related problem. Accident investigation can represent both simple and complex systems. Robert explains, "Simple systems are like five dominoes that have a knock-on effort. By comparison, complex systems have a large number of heterogeneous pieces. And the interaction between the pieces is also quite complex. If you have N pieces, you could have N squared connections between them and an IT system." He further explains, "You can lose a server, but if you're properly configured to have retries, your next level upstream should be able to find a different service. That's a pretty complex interaction that you've set up to avoid an outage." In the case of a complex system, generally, there is not a single root cause for the failure. Instead, it's a combination of emergent properties that manifest themselves as the result of various system components working together, not as a property of any individual component. An example of this is the worst airline disaster in history. Two 747 planes were flying to Gran Canaria airport. However, the airport was closed due to an exploded bomb, and the planes were rerouted to Tenerife. The runway in Tenerife was unaccustomed to handling 747s. Inadequate radars and fog compounded a combination of human errors such as misheard commands. Two planes tried to take off at the same time and collided with each other in the air. Robert talks about Dr. Cook, who wrote about the dual role of operators. "The dual role is the need to preserve the operation of the system and the health of the business. Everything an operator does is with those two objectives in mind." They must take calculated risks to preserve outputs, but this is rarely recognized or complemented. Another component of complex systems is that they are in a perpetual state of partially broken. You don't necessarily discover this until an outage occurs. Only through the post-mortem process do you realize there was a failure. Humans are imperfect beings and are naturally prone to making errors. And when we are given responsibilities, there is always the chance for error. What's a more useful way of thinking about the causes of failures in a complex system? Robert gives the example of a tree structure or AC graph showing one node at the edge, representing the outage or incident. If you step back one layer, you might not ask what is the cause, but rather what were contributing causes? In this manner, you might find multiple contributing factors that interconnect as more nodes grow. With this understanding, you can then look at the system and say, "Well, where are the things that we want to fix?" It’s important to remember that if you find 15 contributing factors, you are not obligated to fix all 15; only three or four of them may be important. Furthermore, it may not be cost-effective to fix everything. One approach is to take all of the identified contributing factors, rank them by some combination of their impact and costs, then decide which are the most important. What is some advice for people who want to stop thinking about their system in terms of simple systems and start thinking about them in terms of complex systems? Robert Blumen suggests understanding that you may have a cognitive bias toward focusing on the portions of the system that influenced decision-making. What was the context that that person was facing at the time? Did they have enough information to make a good decision? Are we putting people in impossible situations where they don't have the right information? Was there adequate monitoring? If this was a known problem, was there a runbook? What are ways to improve the human environment so that the operator can make better decisions if the same set of factors occurs again?

Karan Gupta, Senior Vice President of Engineering, Shift Technologies joins host Marcus Blankenship, Senior Manager Software Engineering, Heroku in this week's episode. Karan shared his career trajectory, which includes founding aliceapp.ai, a fast, privacy-first recording and transcription service for investigative journalism, and acting as an advisor for various companies, including Alphy, a platform for women's career advancement. A concept important to Karan is pragmatic engineering. Pragmatic engineering is about having "an oversized impact on the business by applying the right technology at the right time". It's about the technology, the process of creating that technology, and its impact on the underlying business. For example, building an electric car is cool, but producing a version in which people feel safe? That's engineering that changes the world forever. According to Karan, these are the key things that matter in development: Fast-ness (speed) Function (capabilities provided) Form (how it looks and feels) Fabrication (how it is built on the inside) He recalls the value of the snake game on 404 pages. And the value of intentionality, saying "once you add a feature, it's probably going to be there forever. It's probably going to need maintenance and love and care forever. So do we really want to put it in?" He talks about design and the balance between form versus function, such as designing something aesthetically pleasing versus easy to use. Then, there's fabrication: "How well can we make it? Can we deliver it quickly? And can others maintain it?" Sometimes using off-the-shelf software and well-proven frameworks are the most effective, and "Perfect is the enemy of good enough." Karan stresses the importance of being a learning organization. "Be open to picking up what's out there to help make more informed choices, especially if the choice is to stick with the tried and tested." Good engineers are always open to learning about what new things are coming out and open to different opinions, frameworks, and ways of thinking. Links from this episode Shift Technologies Alphy AliceApp

Anand Gurumurthi, a Director of Engineering at Salesforce, is joined by Marcus Blankenship, a senior manager at Heroku Salesforce on the Runtime Networking Team. Their topic for this episode is to provide career advice for experienced engineers looking to advance their career. There are several all too common scenarios individual contributors face, which Anand and Marcus discuss and offer their perspectives for. These include learning how to ask overcoming bias on your own work and figuring out how to better assess your strengths and weaknesses. In addition, Marcus and Anand discuss getting over the fear of asking for help. They agree that showing an active interest in finding out how a system works is a good way to show that you're engaged in your work and want to grow. In summary, confidence in the workplace is the key to getting what you want. Whether you're looking for a promotion or want to better understand a problem, you are in charge of starting those conversations. In situations where you're looking for guidance, ask for specific feedback from people who want to help you.

Johanna Rothman on Programming Leadership, Thomas “Tido” Carriero on Product Love, Adam Davidson on Lead From The Heart, Josh Wills on Software Engineering Daily, and Amitai Schleier on Programming Leadership. I’d love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email podcast@thekguy.com. And, if you haven’t done it already, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button, and if you like the show, please tell a friend or co-worker who might be interested. This episode covers the five podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two week period starting January 20, 2020. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the fortnight when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. JOHANNA ROTHMAN ON PROGRAMMING LEADERSHIP The Programming Leadership podcast featured Johanna Rothman with host Marcus Blankenship. Marcus started out by asking Johanna why it is important to think about managing ourselves. Johanna says that when we don’t manage ourselves, we don’t have the capability to manage other people. For example, if we insist on micro-managing people, they cannot grow and we prevent them from doing their best work.⁠ ⁠Marcus asked her what micromanagement has to do with managing ourselves. Johanna says that micromanagement comes from fear. You need to learn to manage yourself to manage this fear and reduce your need to micromanage. ⁠ ⁠She says the reason the first book is about managing yourself is that if you can avoid doing the things that make people feel badly, you can create an environment where people can excel.⁠ ⁠They talked about surveys and Marcus asked Johanna’s opinion on anonymous versus named survey responses. Johanna says that when you have a culture where there is a lot of blaming and micromanagement and little coaching, she would recommend an anonymous survey.⁠ ⁠Marcus talked about how technical managers often know how to do the work itself very well and he asked Johanna when this can trip us up. One way it trips us up, she says, is that people on the team don’t get a chance to practice if the manager is writing code instead of managing. Second, when you have not been in the code in a while, you do not know what it looks like anymore. ⁠ ⁠Marcus asked how managers can get time to think in today’s high time-pressure environments. Johanna says that if you are spending a lot of time in meetings, you should be looking at whether you can delegate any of those meetings to the people doing the work. This delegating is not sloughing off your responsibilities, but making sure you are not part of a team that you are not supposed to be a part of.⁠ Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/becoming-better-manager-means-starting-yourself-johanna/id1461916939?i=1000460138590 Website link: https://programmingleadership.podbean.com/e/becoming-a-better-manager-means-starting-with-yourself-with-johanna-rothman/ THOMAS “TIDO” CARRIERO ON PRODUCT LOVE The Product Love podcast featured Thomas “Tido” Carriero with host Eric Boduch. Tido oversees all of engineering, product, and design at Segment. Segment provides customer data infrastructure or CDI, helping companies collect, unify, and connect data about their own interactions with their customers. It gives these companies a unified view of their customer data across all channels.⁠ ⁠When he joined Segment, Tido was blown away by how robust the ecosystem was and by the attractive idea of empowering business teams, marketing teams, and product teams by installing application tracking once and being able to turn on integrations with the flick of a switch. Often, he says, a lot of business and marketing and less technical folks are blocked from doing the best job they could do because of tough integration problems that Segment solves.⁠ ⁠Segment naturally has a lot of adjacencies. They touch critical customer data and they need to decide whether to use that to empower engineering, marketing, or others. This requires being clear at the beginning of the year that they will pick two or three bets as an organization to focus on.⁠ ⁠Eric asked Tido what product leaders often do wrong. Tido says the biggest mistake product leaders make by far is not looking in the mirror and making an honest assessment of where things are. Getting attached to an idea makes it harder to give it a critical look. Often, you’re only a small pivot away from a valuable product. As the leader of an organization, he sees his job as creating a culture where failure is not just okay but celebrated. If people are getting slapped on the hand for failure, they will just get even more committed to their first ideas. Healthy teams that seriously innovate look at the data and are willing to pivot when it tells them unpleasant things.  Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/thomas-tido-carriero-joins-product-love-to-talk-about/id1343610309?i=1000459980786 Website link: https://www.spreaker.com/user/casted/edited-tido-joins-product-love-mp3 ADAM DAVIDSON ON LEAD FROM THE HEART The Lead From The Heart podcast featured Adam Davidson with host Mark C. Crowley. Adam Davidson is the creator of the Planet Money podcast and is staff business writer at The New Yorker. He has a new book called The Passion Economy. The theme of the book is that choosing your career used to mean choosing between work that makes your heart sing and work that pays well but disconnects you from your passions, but the new world order demands that we follow our passions and pursue work that leverages both our talents and our interests.⁠ ⁠Adam’s grandfather worked his entire career in a ball bearing factory and only made a good living by working double shifts. He believed that people who follow their passions go nowhere in life.⁠ ⁠Adam’s father was the opposite. Making money was far less important to him than following his dream of performing as a Broadway actor.⁠ ⁠These two men represent the dichotomy of having to choose financial success or your passion but not both.⁠ ⁠The people of Adam’s father’s generation and his grandfather’s generation had to choose between a life of passion and a life of financial success, but people today, Adam says, are lucky. They are lucky for the reasons that terrify us. Adam says, “All of these forces that have done so much damage to the stability of the 20th century economy also provide exactly the tools that allow us to figure out what we uniquely love and are good at and find those people, even if they’re thinly spread all over the country or all over the globe, who also crave what it is we can provide and are willing to pay for it.”⁠ ⁠Mark summed up the book as being about combining your training and expertise with a personal passion to find your own niche. According to Adam, some people take a total left turn and go into a completely different field later in their lives, but the most successful people he has met combine their passion with the skills they have previously acquired.⁠ Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/adam-davidson-new-rules-for-thriving-in-twenty-first/id1365633369?i=1000462188105 Website link: https://blubrry.com/leadfromtheheartpodcast/54035306/adam-davidson-the-new-rules-for-thriving-in-the-twenty-first-century/ JOSH WILLS ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DAILY The Software Engineering Daily podcast featured Josh Wills with host Jeff Meyerson. Josh Wills was the director of data engineering at Slack when Slack was building out a solution to scaling its data infrastructure. When the first analysts at Slack were hired, their only option was to spin up their own little databases that had cached copies of Slack’s main transactional database. Eventually, Slack hired data engineers that built systems that could scale up what an analyst could do. They built up a lot of infrastructure involving Airflow jobs producing Parquet files on S3 that were queryable through tools like Presto and it was, according to Josh, a “ghost city” for a while. All the while, the analytics team was still using the existing infrastructure of ETL jobs running on the transactional database. It wasn’t until Slack started aggressively hiring analysts, data scientists, and engineers from the Googles, Facebooks, and Twitters of the world that they had people who knew how to use the stuff Josh and his team were building. Jeff asked how the various design philosophies coming from the new hires from Google and Facebook got resolved. Josh said it got resolved by him making all the decisions. There were a million things to do, so the design direction was often the result of whoever was the first mover. If Josh had it all to do over again, he would do many things differently, but he knows that nobody would appreciate it because they would have never experienced the inferior designs. It is hard to appreciate the pain that something saved you. Most of your good decisions are invisible and taken for granted while your bad decisions cause pain and suffering forever. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/slack-data-platform-with-josh-wills/id1019576853?i=1000462100792 Website link: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2020/01/10/slack-data-platform-with-josh-wills/ AMITAI SCHLEIER ON PROGRAMMING LEADERSHIP The Programming Leadership podcast featured Amitai Schleier with host Marcus Blankenship. Amitai talked to Marcus about his fork of qmail called notqmail. Qmail is a Unix program for running an email server that, unfortunately, hasn’t been updated in twenty years and has a number of rough edges. Over the last twenty years, Amitai has invested time into softening qmail’s rough edges through improved package management. More recently, Amitai started thinking about getting the people who are working on their own forks of qmail to collaborate on a single fork. The first step was getting some advice. A key piece of advice came from Llewellyn Falco. Llewellyn said, “Qmail already has a lot of nice seams and interfaces. Without too much more work and risk, you could add a couple more seams so that whatever modernization is required could be done as plugins or extensions. The next problem to think about is egos. Not all ideas are going to win.” He then gave Amitai the best piece of advice: “Whatever you do, offer yourself to other programmers to get their code converted to extensions first. As to which implementation of a particular new feature is to be incorporated, that decision is not your call. Take as extensions as many implementations as people want to give and let users decide.” Marcus asked about how to influence a group of people on a project without being coercive. Amitai says that he discovered years ago that when a situation is a little confused, his default response is to seek to lower his perceived social status. Otherwise, he cannot influence the way he wants to if he’s a big shot that people are supposed to listen to. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/collaboration-and-notqmail-with-amitai-schleier/id1461916939?i=1000462047766 Website link: https://programmingleadership.podbean.com/e/collaboration-and-notqmail-with-amitai-schleier/ LINKS Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing podcast@thekguy.com. 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Zach Stone on Drunken PM, Etienne de Bruin on Programming Leadership, Josh Seiden on The Product Experience, Pooja Agarwal on Coaching For Leaders, and Cate Huston on Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg. I’d love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email podcast@thekguy.com. And, if you haven’t done it already, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button, and if you like the show, please tell a friend or co-worker who might be interested. This episode covers the five podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two week period starting September 30, 2019. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the fortnight when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. ZACH STONE ON DRUNKEN PM The Drunken PM podcast featured Zach Stone with host Dave Prior. Dave and Zack talked about Motivational Interviewing or MI, a technique for helping a person navigate the process of making changes in their life. They first talked about what doesn’t work. Walking up to a smoker of twenty years and listing to them all the reasons why smoking is bad for them is not going to change their behavior. It is the same thing when you are trying to change the way a person does their work. Listing the reasons you think they should change makes the change all about what you want when it should be all about what they want. The person you want to change is an expert in their own life. A big part of Motivational Interviewing is finding the natural desires, reasons, and needs for why they should change and making them visible. Dave likened the difference between telling people to change and using motivational interviewing to the difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Zach shared a quote from Lao Tzu: “A leader is best when people barely know they exist. When their work is done, their aim fulfilled, the people will say, ‘We did it ourselves.’” At the core of that quote, he says, is a sentiment around empowerment and autonomy. If we want to create an environment where people feel ownership and create sustainable change, people need to feel like that change came from them and is owned by them. Change is a never-ending process; it is not an event; it is not something that happens overnight. Dave asked, if we’ve been dealing the problem of organizational change for so long, why have we not yet solved it? Zach went all the way back to Theory X and Theory Y and how we are still often stuck in Theory X even today. He pointed out that the habits of how we work become almost like addictions we can’t shake. Dave says he tries to be a Theory Y person, but finds himself falling into Theory X all the time. Zach says that this is “change fatigue”. A big part of motivational interviewing is recognizing that we have within us the “righting reflex”: the reflex to correct and inform and tell people how they should be acting. It is not something that you can really escape; you can just own it, be aware of it, and work around it as much as possible. Zach says organizations have immune systems that fight the change you try to inject into them. The reason MI is so elegant, he says, is because it maximizes the work not done. In MI, you try to pull change by igniting the natural mechanisms that are already there rather than asserting yourself on top of that system. The textbook definition of MI is that it is a collaborative conversation to strengthen a person’s own motivation for and commitment to change. It is both a set of principles and a framework of techniques. The five main tools are open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, summarizing, and informing. Zach told the story of speaking with a CIO about their technology stack. He shared with him that the developers at that company thought that innovation was stalling and technical debt was piling up. The CIO answered that they needed to develop new features and there was no time to address technical debt. Zach tried to affirm by talking about having seen some great innovation coming from this CIO’s teams and asking how they could keep it going. What became apparent was that the CIO was not going to budge. So he asked an open-ended question: “What do you think will happen if you let your technical debt pile up?” The CIO replied, “It is probably going to slow us down and hurt our ability to recruit top talent.” So Zach used reflection. Zach said, “On one hand, you feel you need to keep moving on developing features even if it means technical debt cleanup takes a backseat. On the other hand, if you do this, it is going to hurt your ability to recruit talent and eventually will slow down feature development.” He let that sit and thanked the CIO for his time because it was clear that the CIO was not ready to make a shift in his thinking. Two and half months went by and Zach leveraged the power of the group of this CIO’s technical leads. At a gathering of these leads where the CIO was present, Zach asked what their number one obstacle was and they all said, “Time.” Hearing it from people he trusted and respected, the CIO said that they would be launching an effort to address the technical debt issue. He used “change talk”: he made a commitment to change in a public forum. The research shows that the more people engage in change talk, the more likely they are to put plans into action. The next day, emails were flying back and forth, meetings were set, mechanisms were getting put in place for the tech leads and their teams to address this issue. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/motivational-interviewing-zach-stone/id1121124593?i=1000447916792 Website link: https://soundcloud.com/drunkenpmradio/motivational-interviewing-zach-stone-august-2019 ETIENNE DE BRUIN ON PROGRAMMING LEADERSHIP The Programming Leadership podcast featured Etienne de Bruin with host Marcus Blankenship. Etienne is the CEO of 7CTOs, a company that puts Chief Technology Officers into a peer mentoring environment to help them learn everything from situational leadership to achieving personal and professional goals. When he started the 7CTOs community, Etienne thought the conversations would focus on the software development lifecycle, technical debt, and managing the CEO’s expectations, but every time the focus went to the people challenges. He attributes the success of 7CTOs to how it addresses problems that require emotional intelligence (EQ) rather than IQ. Etienne told a story about when he first started a startup twelve years ago, he thought he was a fantastic CTO: he knew his stuff and he built the product’s first iteration with his bare hands. He had a reality check when he and his team did a retreat where they attempted to brainstorm ideas. He thought he was succeeding on inclusion and making every voice count from the most junior to the most senior. He was surprised to find that very few were participating. Until that moment, he hadn’t been aware of how fearful everyone was of collaborating with him because he was so blunt in his feedback and he was only happy if the idea was his own. He realized that he wasn’t going to succeed in the next level of his company’s development if he didn’t change. He had to let go of the idea that his employees were just there to execute his ideas and to see them as independent, creative human beings. He read the book Creative Confidence and it showed him that every single person is creative and we just vary in our confidence about our creativity.  Marcus said that if employees are not there just to be extensions of ourselves, what kind of employees should we be looking for. Etienne said that there are two things we want to do when we hire. First, we want the candidate to fulfill the minimum requirements of the job spec. Second, we want the candidate to be set up to succeed inside of the team. Etienne has used personality tests like DISC profiles and enneagrams to get an idea of how well the candidate can meet the second criterion. They got into a discussion about the difference between avoiding emotions and having emotions but realizing you have a choice in how you respond to them. Etienne pointed out that you can rely on other people to help you through your emotions. You can increase your EQ with the help of others. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/putting-the-emotion-into-eq-with-etienne-de-bruin/id1461916939?i=1000447505984 Website link: https://programmingleadership.podbean.com/e/putting-the-emotion-into-eq/ JOSH SEIDEN ON THE PRODUCT EXPERIENCE The Product Experience podcast featured Josh Seiden with hosts Lily Smith and Randy Silver. Lily, referring to Josh’s new book Outcomes Over Output, asked Josh how he defines an outcome. He says it is a change in human behavior that drives business results. One reason that this is a useful definition is that it is specific. When you use outcome in the broad sense, it can be heard as a synonym for result or goal. A second reason is that human behavior is observable, concrete, and action-oriented. This definition for outcome lets you ask the questions, “What are we going to do to deliver these outcomes? How can we change people’s behavior through the systems that we are building?” These questions lead to concrete answers where you can observe the results. The reason Josh says “human behavior” is because he is referring to any actor in the system. In UX design, the actor is usually assumed to be the user. But, in this case, it can be the user, the customer, an internal person (such as someone in customer support), a journalist you want writing about your product, or any person who is participating in the system that is to be built. Lily said that in her own attempts to move more towards outcomes, she has had the problem of having too high-level an outcome. Josh says that the Logic Model framework from the non-profit, social-good sector can help with this. In this framework, high-level measures like profit, cost, net promoter score, or customer retention are called impacts. It is unlikely that an individual team can move such numbers on their own. So you ask what outcomes will create the impact that you seek and you get something that is scoped down enough to be actionable on the team level. Randy asked why it is so hard for organizations to change their thinking about this and stop setting goals around milestones, dates, projects, and outputs. Josh says that you can’t get around the problem of output because making stuff is how you get to the outcome. He gave the example of Scrum. Scrum is built around the sprint. The sprint isn’t complete until you create a finished piece of software you can ship. This is important, but it doesn’t mean that what you created has the effect in the world that you want it to have. Randy asked about the problem of the increase in dependencies and complexity as companies grow. Josh says you have to think about how to increase the independence of the teams. He says you should think of your internal teams (those that are not customer-facing) as having customers. If you are an internal team, you can ask, “What does the customer-facing team that is our customer need and what is the smallest thing I can give them so that they are unblocked and can start serving their customer.” By remodeling this relationship from a dependency to a customer service model, you can string outcomes down the value chain and hopefully reduce dependencies that way. Another alternative is to give teams a shared or aligned outcome. They compared Josh’s terminology with that of Objectives & Key Results (OKR). Josh agreed with Lily that his definition of an outcome matches up with a key result. He used the John Doerr example of how Google once had an objective of solving the problem of the Internet being too slow by making browsing feel more like flipping through a magazine, which became the Google Chrome program. The key result was based on the number of users actively using Chrome. It wasn’t that they shipped it. It wasn’t the number of downloads. When you ensure a KR is not an output but a meaningful result in the world, it drives you to an outcome-centric definition. Josh talked about a section from his book called “the three magic questions.” The first question is, “What are the user and customer behaviors that drive business results?” The next question is, “How do we get people to do more of these things?” The last question is, “How do we know when we’re right?” Lily asked how you build outcomes into your roadmap. Josh told the story from his other book, Sense and Respond, about a large startup in New York whose annual planning process was to produce an outcome-based roadmap. They might say something like, “We want to increase our marketshare in Europe” or “We want to shore up our business with this customer segment.” The product teams listed all the projects they could do, the demand from the market, and the things that need fixing. The product managers would try to reconcile those two things and choose the body of work that aligned with leadership priorities. They would commit to leadership to, say, increase marketshare in Europe by some percentage, but would not sign up for outputs. Instead, they would reserve the right to swap in and out projects based on whether they were moving the needle or not on the outcomes. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/outcomes-over-outputs-josh-seiden-on-product-experience/id1447100407?i=1000445191364 Website link: https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2019/07/outcomes-over-outputs-josh-seiden-on-the-product-experience/ POOJA AGARWAL ON COACHING FOR LEADERS The Coaching For Leaders podcast featured Pooja Agarwal with host Dave Stachowiak. Dave brought up that, in her book, Pooja says that the science of learning sits dormant in academic journals rather than being easily accessible. She says that we are all learners and we are all teachers. Teaching is something we do everyday even without thinking about it. Dave asked about the three stages of learning that Pooja describes in her book. Pooja pointed out that the three stage model is a simplistic model but is a helpful framework. The first stage is encoding or getting things into our heads. The second stage is storage. The third stage, retrieval, is where we pull information out. In higher ed, she says, we often think of retrieval as showing what you know, but we learn when we retrieve. By that act of retrieving, we are helping ourselves remember something in the future. Dave gave an example from a previous episode on delegation. He said that, after delegating a task, leaders often ask, “Do you understand?” A better question would be something like, “What are the key deliverables of what I have delegated to you?” This question gets the employee to articulate it to not only assess where they are in their learning but also to reinforce their learning. Dave asked about the statement in the book to stop reviewing things and instead ask for what was discussed. Pooja said that as leaders we often start meetings with, “Here’s what we did at the last meeting, so here’s what we’re going to accomplish today.” Instead, ask people to take a minute and write down what they can remember from the previous meeting. This engages them in such a way that it helps them to better understand the content of the present meeting.  Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/421-help-people-learn-through-powerful-teaching-pooja/id458827716?i=1000445006344 Website link: https://coachingforleaders.com/podcast/learn-through-powerful-teaching-pooja-agarwal/ CATE HUSTON ON DISTRIBUTED, WITH MATT MULLENWEG The “Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg” podcast featured Cate Huston with host Matt Mullenweg. Cate leads the developer experience team at Automattic. This team is concerned with what it means to be a developer at Automattic, including the challenges of distributed, remote development, how developers can learn from each other, and how developers can get the support they need to chart their own career paths. She says a critical part of the developer experience is the connection between the hiring process and the on-boarding process. They are thinking about how to make the hiring process a good experience where the candidate can see if Automattic is the right fit for them and Automattic can see if the candidate is the right fit for the company. They want this to carry through as the new employee joins the team and becomes successful in their new role. Because the Automattic organization is so large and the developer experience team is so small, they look for pivot points to maximize their impact. She gave an example: when a team gets a new lead, that is a pivot point. They support this new lead and help them develop and iterate on their process. Cate’s advice to Automattic job candidates is to be patient because distributed companies take longer to hire and there is a lot of competition for remote jobs. A well-crafted cover letter is a must. When Cate is hiring an engineer, she is looking for two things. The first is the ability to work with the kind of complex, legacy codebase they have. The second is to be able to respond well to feedback because you are expected to grow over time in your career. She talked about self-awareness. As an example of low self-awareness, she talked about how some people need to be seen as being “nice,” regardless of whether it is true or not. The gap between the way somebody talks about themselves and their actions reveals their lack of self-awareness. She listed some things that increase self-awareness: reading a broad variety of fiction, cultivating a broad network of people, and traveling outside your comfort zone. Matt added that you can travel outside your comfort zone without leaving your city by visiting parts of your city you haven’t traveled to before. Cate also recommends shedding defensiveness and getting curious. She also recommends asking for advice. People often don’t give advice when they think you are doing a good job. When she gives feedback to people, she asks them if they felt seen when they received the feedback. Matt tries to remind himself that feedback is a gift. Cate says that if somebody cares about you enough to tell you that they think you should do better, that means they think you can do better. Cate also recommends that we stop giving advice, especially without context or understanding of what someone is trying to achieve. Instead, pause, ask questions, get context, and reflect back to someone what they are saying to you. Last, Cate says to own up and admit what is not going well. She gave an example of her team recently doubling in size. Seeing her job changing, she asked the team what the most useful thing she does for them was and what she should stop doing. Matt asked what else makes a great engineering culture. Here is Cate’s answer: Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/automattics-cate-huston-on-building-distributed-engineering/id1463243282?i=1000447512202 Website link: https://distributed.blog/2019/08/22/cate-huston-distributed-engineering/ LINKS Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing podcast@thekguy.com. Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekguy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithmmcdonald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekguypage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_k_guy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKGuy Website:

Will Larson on Greater Than Code, Marcus Blankenship on Software Engineering Radio, Sonal Chokshi on Software Engineering Daily, Roman Pichler on Being Human, and Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt on Hanselminutes. I’d love for you to email me with any comments about the show or any suggestions for podcasts I might want to feature. Email podcast@thekguy.com. And, if you haven’t done it already, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. This episode covers the five podcast episodes I found most interesting and wanted to share links to during the two week period starting September 2, 2019. These podcast episodes may have been released much earlier, but this was the fortnight when I started sharing links to them to my social network followers. WILL LARSON ON GREATER THAN CODE The Greater Than Code podcast featured Will Larson with hosts Jessica Kerr, Arty Starr, and Rein Henrichs. Will talked about systems thinking, specifically referencing Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems: A Primer. As a sixteen-year-old, he was exposed to systems thinking by his economics professor father. They talked about how to bring about change in complex systems and Rein brought up Virginia Satir’s change model.  They talked about various forms of dysfunction, with an example being tasks that are marked as completed by developers without first doing the work of validation. Will’s own example is that executives never miss their goals; they just redefine the goals so that they hit them. There is a certain level of seniority where you can never be held accountable because you are the accountability function. Getting back into the topic of how to change complex systems, Will referenced the book, The First 90 Days as a great explanation of the need to go slow and observe before you try to change things. He says that the “great man theory” has been out of style for decades in the study of history, but is still in style in tech as the most causal way to understand how change works and also the most comforting. Rein talked about how the heroic individual myth is the other side of the coin to the scapegoat. Just as you pile all the blame onto the scapegoat, you pile all the credit onto the hero. He says that cultures that engage in hero myth-building are also likely to engage in scapegoating. Will says he himself has not seen much scapegoating at the companies he works at, likely because those cultures were unwilling to hold folks accountable for their work, but he has seen the hero myth at every company he has worked. Will then spoke about the 10x engineer myth. Will says he meets people who have been in tech for six or seven years who have the idea that they are almost done with their career. It may be due to the “senior engineer after two years” phenomenon where the career path is not well-defined and a lot of companies don’t know how to take advantage of the skills of people with 15 to 20 years of experience. A second reason is that the industry is an overwhelming and draining environment and people choose to opt out of it. As a result, we have very few engineers who have been around long enough to witness the long-term consequences of their brilliant ideas. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/142-modeling-constraints-in-human-systems-with-will-larson/id1163023878?i=1000446345964 Website link: https://www.greaterthancode.com/modeling-constraints-in-human-systems MARCUS BLANKENSHIP ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING RADIO The Software Engineering Radio podcast featured Marcus Blankenship with host Travis Kimmel. They talked about motivation, specifically motivation of engineering teams. Marcus says that motivation is the desire to get things done and every engineer coming out of school is motivated from day one. If you get one of these people hired onto your team and, two years later, they are demotivated, suffering from PTSD, scared to offer ideas, and figuring they are just a cog in a machine, your problem is your company or your team, not the engineer you hired. Marcus says he is doing secret research on motivation as he is now interviewing candidates for a job and asking them why they are looking to leave their current job. Nobody says, “Pay.” Often the answer is a lack of alignment with their boss or their company, resulting in the engineer losing the desire to contribute because of a relationship problem. These engineers are not stick-in-the-muds that are angry they don’t get to use COBOL anymore. Something happened where instead of having their ideas valued and heard and being part of the discussion, they somehow got disconnected from their boss. In the seventies, Marcus says, researchers discovered a strong correlation between positive employer-employee relationships and the amount of job satisfaction, quality of work, turnover intentions, and amount of promotions. We are thirty-five years into a few thousand scientific studies that continue to prove that the relationship one has with one’s supervisor matters more than any other factor when it comes to job performance and job satisfaction. Marcus says that a supervisor’s one true job is to create a trusting relationship with the people that report to you. Travis shared his own experience in having one-on-ones with his supervisors that felt to him like they were trying to artificial manufacturing a relationship because there was no indication of what the goal of the meeting was.  Marcus says that good one-on-ones are bi-directional. One-on-ones in which the boss just gets status updates from the subordinate and gives new marching orders are often dissatisfying for both parties. Another flawed kind of one-on-one is where it is all about the employee. Such one-on-ones are not effective and neither party likes these either. Marcus suggests that we apply to our one-on-ones the same Agile thinking that we apply to our work. Every month, at one of your one-on-ones, do a retro on the one-on-one. Talk about why you are doing them, what value you’re getting from them, and how to make them better. They talked about psychological safety. Marcus says a lot of managers don’t realize that they are not in a good position to measure psychological safety based on their own gut. He says tools like Claire Lew’s knowyourteam.com, officevibe.com, and other anonymous survey tools can help. When we become a manager or team lead that has you supervising or leading, we forget that we are in a position of power. Travis added that leaders need to be careful about what they say casually so that it doesn’t get taken as a mandate. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/episode-374-marcus-blankenship-on-motivating-programmers/id120906714?i=1000445260176 Website link: https://www.se-radio.net/2019/07/episode-374-marcus-blankenship-on-motivating-programmers/ SONAL CHOKSHI ON SOFTWARE ENGINEERING DAILY The Software Engineering Daily podcast featured a16z podcast host Sonal Chokshi with host Jeff Meyerson. Jeff started out by asking why a VC firm decided to start a podcast. Sonal says that a16z has always had a culture of writing, blogging, and sharing ideas. This led them to develop an editorial operation from which the podcast naturally followed. Jeff asked what lessons from blogging apply to podcasting. Sonal sees podcasting as the next evolution of blogging because of its similar intimacy and a similar feeling of authenticity. The difference, she says, is that podcasting is a community and a movement.  Sonal talked about her favorite a16z episodes, including an episode on emojis. She loved it because everybody understands how to use emojis but there is a lot of deep tech and governance involved in making emojis possible. That episode, she said, encapsulates the whole a16z podcast: the intersection of technology, people, politics, context, culture, and humanity.  Jeff brought up a16z’s connection to Mike Ovitz’s Creative Artists Agency. Having read Ovitz’s book and noticed how it portrays Ovitz as a workaholic, Jeff asked Sonal how she finds balance while drinking from the addicting technological firehose. Sonal says there is a lack of nuance in the debates about screen time and work/life balance. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/a16z-podcasting-with-sonal-chokshi/id1019576853?i=1000446547922 Website link: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/08/09/a16z-podcasting-with-sonal-chokshi/ ROMAN PICHLER ON BEING HUMAN The Being Human podcast featured Roman Pichler with host Richard Atherton. Richard asked Roman what a product manager is. Roman says a product manager is someone who takes an idea and helps bring it to life, launch it, make it successful, and keep it successful. Richard asked about the distinction between a product manager and Scrum’s notion of product owner. Roman sees the product owner as a product management role, but methodologies like SAFe have redefined the product owner to be a tactical role, misunderstanding the intention behind the role and the practicalities such as answering questions from the dev team, refining backlog items, and answering support and sales questions. He says there is too much focus on the details and this risks losing sight of the big picture. To do a good job for users and for the business, Roman says it is helpful to have people looking after digital assets with the right qualifications, skills, organizational support, authority, and autonomy. He says the term “mini-CEO” appeals to some product people because it indicates that product people need a certain level of authority, but a CEO would have marketing and sales functions under their control and product people do not. Richard asked what talents Roman had to develop to be a great product person. Roman started out as a programmer and began to help business groups come up with new products. What helped him most was to boost his own understanding of how business works and the second most important element was letting go of being interested in how digital products work and focusing instead on who benefits from them. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/72-to-manage-products-is-to-care-with-roman-pichler/id1369745673?i=1000446514943 Website link: http://media.cdn.shoutengine.com/podcasts/4081235a-554f-4a8f-90c2-77dc3b58051f/audio/9b2501e7-e618-46f6-8f41-abd69c871211.mp3 DAVE THOMAS AND ANDY HUNT ON HANSELMINUTES The Hanselminutes podcast featured Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt with host Scott Hanselman. Scott started by asking whether Dave and Andy knew at the time they wrote the Pragmatic Programmer 20 years ago that they were writing what would become a seminal work. Dave said that both of them were stunned by its success. The book was intended as a way to clarify their own thoughts based on their experiences as consultants in which their clients all had the same kinds of problems: inconsistent builds, the shipping of untested code, and impossible-to-change designs. Scott asked about the importance of the name of the book. Andy said that there was a strain of thought at the time the book was written that was dogmatic and they deliberately pushed against such approaches. Dave pointed out that this was harder on their readers because it forced them to figure out for themselves what works for them. They got into a discussion of what kind of educational background one needs to be a successful programmer. Dave revealed that he is currently teaching classes at SMU to, he says, corrupt the youth by teaching them things like functional programming, and because traditional computer science education is poorly serving the industry and the student. People are coming out of university with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and, in terms of their value in the industry, they are not much different from people who are coming out of eight-week bootcamps. He teaches third or fourth year undergraduates and graduate students and he has found that none have been shown any form of testing. He would much rather hire someone who had the right attitude, was smart, and who could talk to people and he could show such a person how to code while on the job. Andy added that he gets the feeling that most computer science programs are there to teach you to become a professor of computer science rather than a problem-solver. What Andy says people need to learn, and what university education is not providing, are problem-solving skills. Apple Podcasts link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/pragmatic-programmer-celebrates-20-years-dave-thomas/id117488860?i=1000446461596 Website link: https://hanselminutes.simplecast.com/episodes/the-pragmatic-programmer-celebrates-20-years-with-dave-thomas-and-andy-hunt-VBmLw9lP LINKS Ask questions, make comments, and let your voice be heard by emailing podcast@thekguy.com. Twitter: https://twitter.com/thekguy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithmmcdonald/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thekguypage Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_k_guy/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheKGuy Website:

Marcus Blankenship discusses programmer motivation (and de-motivation), which is key to job satisfaction, performance, and turnover.  Travis Kimmel spoke with Blankenship about why engineering motivation matters, the unique motivation needs of engineers, mentoring and coaching for motivation, 1:1s, and self-motivation.   Related Links Marcus Blankenship’s website Habits that Ruin Your Technical team Related SE-Radio Episodes […]

Motivation comes through relationships, safety, and environments which allow everyone to contribute.

This concept got on my radar through my friend Marcus Blankenship's workshop a couple weeks ago ... Here's his article on tips for providing appropriate help to others. https://medium.com/@marcusblankenship/three-steps-to-stop-inflicting-help-on-others-be176d05b071

Bryan Helmig, CTO and Co-Founder of Zapier, discusses managing distributed software teams. Marcus Blankenship spoke with Helmig about how to create a productive remote culture, collaboration patterns and tools, the challenges of time zones, special challenges that managers face, and the extra importance of clear communication on remote teams.   Related Links Zapier Guest twitter: […]

This week on the Programming Leadership podcast, host Marcus Blankenship shares his core beliefs about what it truly means to be a manager. He discusses the differences between the management and leadership and highlights key aspects of leadership that inspires anyone, regardless of job title or natural born talents, to step up and lead with confidence. Show Notes It’s important to find out what it takes to be a great leader, even if you never get promoted to manager. And that’s exactly what the the Programming Leadership podcast will help you figure out. Management is about things and processes, whereas leadership focuses on people — empowering and unleashing others to help them reach their highest potential. Author Gerald Weinberg describes leadership as, “creating an environment where everyone can participate in solving the most important problems.” Read more from his book, Becoming a Technical Leader. Two important things to remember about leadership: 1) Leadership is a skill that can be learned and 2) Leadership is about building (high-quality) relationships. Links: Book recommendation: Becoming a Technical Leader by Gerald Weinberg Book recommendation: Mindset by Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D. Sponsor: GitPrime

Welcome to the Programming Leadership podcast! In this episode, you’ll meet the host, Marcus Blankenship, as he introduces his passion for helping programmers navigate transitions. After all, most engineers don’t plan on becoming managers. So whether you’re a new programmer, you’re on the management track, or if you’ve been a manager for years, be sure to tune in as Marcus will help prepare you to not become just a manager, but how to truly become a great leader. Show Notes For Marcus, his steps of going from programmer to manager, manager to leader, leader to executive and business owner was the hardest journey of his life. Making the transition from computer-person interaction to person-person interaction is what the Programming Leadership podcast is all about. Leadership is about developing a set of skills where everyone can contribute to problem-solving. Links: Marcus’ Website: https://marcusblankenship.com/

Marcus Blankenship is a technical leadership author, coach and speaker, helping great programmers and coders to become great tech leaders of the future. He is the author of the book “Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team: Pitfalls and Solutions for Technical Managers”. Marcus tells us what technical leadership is and how technical-experts-turn-leaders can fight their impulses to resolve problems themselves and start empowering their teams to resolve them instead. After you finish with the episode, check out Marcus’s web site at https://marcusblankenship.com/ where you will find plethora of resources and workshops.

What’s In This Episode: Jill's got a brand new book called The Best Business Book in the World (*according to my mom)! For anecdotes, biz tricks, tech tips, and tools, you can get her book on Amazon. We're also talking about WHYs today. Have you seen Simon Sinek's TED Talk? Jill uses it all the time because it was the first time that someone explained why WHY was so important in a way that makes sense. "Without the 'why', no one's gonna trust you and no one's gonna pay you any money." - Jill Brad says that we spend a lot of time talking about the what and the how, but the why is a lot more interesting. Brad follows Marcus Blankenship, who wrote recently that sometimes the why is also important when we're delegating tasks to our team. Especially when we're considering creative tasks, what would be more helpful? The what or the why? "I want to demonstrate our values and be consistent with our brand." - Brad Jill has woven the concept of why into everything The Founding Momsdoes - why helps everyone understand where you're coming from. Want these show notes sent to your email? Get them every week by signing up for our mailing list here. Do you talk about the why of tasks with your team?

Trever and Marcus dive into the purpose and use of having playbooks for teams. They discuss how playbooks benefit not only large teams but also can be impactful for individual contractors.Featured Links:Zeal Project Foundations Playbook: https://codingzeal.lpages.co/zeal-project-foundations-playbook/

Hello everybody! Marcus Blankenship joins us on the show today. Marcus helps coders become solid leaders and build high-performing teams; he’s also the author of Habits that Ruin Your Technical Team. We’re going to talk about his new course, Software Leader Seminar, and his insights on how to be an effective Tech Leader. When you are leading experts: get out of the way and empower your team to make decisions Episode Quotes "It's about creating a team and an environment that's safe enough where everyone can really contribute." "My approach... I would start applying more individual human personal touches." "That was sort of a big realization that if there's demand, there's probably money here." "With courses for entrepreneurs or consultants you do have to figure out how to navigate around life so that people stay on track." Listen to Learn 00:36 Getting to know Marcus Blankenship, Rapid 5 Questions 02:35 Marcus' business journey (Tech Leadership Guy) 08:42 Pivoting to the right audience 11:23 Leadership skills that tech leaders should have 15:46 Overview of Software Leader Seminar, course objectives 21:21 Methodology of creating Software Leader Seminar 29:51 How to manage the learner's journey? 33:56 Upcoming updates for the course 38:20 Tips in creating learning programs 43:48 Exciting things coming up from Marcus, links and announcements Get the Bonus Segment! Like bonuses? Marcus and I recorded a bonus segment where we went deeper into how to be an effective leader...and more. You can grab it here: https://get.zencourses.co/extra/

Marcus has established himself as a go-to coach for tech team leads for organizations of all sizes. We at Zeal have learned a lot from Marcus over the years and lean on him for counsel often. We are excited to introduce you to him if you are just now discovering Marcus.Featured Links:Marcus Blankenship: https://www.marcusblankenship.comTwitter: https://twitter.com/justzerosFramework: https://marcusblankenship.com/one-on-one-framework

01:12 – Marcus’ Superpower: Helping Engineers Become Good Bosses 02:30 – Bosses Who Don’t Wanna Boss: Ending Up in Management The Peter Principle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle) 10:37 – Are there people who just aren’t cut out for management or leadership? 14:20 – Applying Rationality to Organizations 20:23 – Alignment Not Agreement 24:52 – Is there a safe way to try and fail at management? Trying on Hats Ruby For Good (https://rubyforgood.org/) 31:16 – What does “BOSS” mean? Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316017930/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0316017930&linkId=0e148f2c493dbfd36e294137d6ba6651) 36:03 – The Up/Down of the Hierarchy Metaphors We Live By (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226468011/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0226468011&linkId=fe51e9159155a6387c1d742001413d5f) Humble Inquiry: The Gentle Art of Asking Instead of Telling by Edgar H. Schein (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1609949811/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1609949811&linkId=35044b8aa35b0f47b24a48915323ceca) 36:03 – What are the skills that good managers have? How do you know if you’re doing a good job? Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager by Michael Lopp (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1484221575/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1484221575&linkId=ea061ab737b69a99cce64192a3f874b0) Managing the Unmanageable: Rules, Tools, and Insights for Managing Software People and Teams by Mickey W. Mantle and Ron Lichty (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/032182203X/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=therubyrep-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=032182203X&linkId=0257878e2a490afedc2e7518787a93a1) 53:26 – Giving and Receiving Feedback and Support, Reinforcing Behavior, and Focusing Attention Reflections: Jamey: Management vs. leadership. Sam: “I need this from you,” vs. “Why didn’t you do this?” Jess: When we react to something, it’s rarely about the thing we think we’re reacting to. Career narratives by Will Larson (https://lethain.com/career-narratives/) Additionally, management is like being on stage and you can be uncomfortable in your own role. Marcus: Listening to others is critical and impactful. Also, letting people taste and see what it’s like to be in management and leadership without the commitment. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode). To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Amazon links may be affiliate links, which means you’re supporting the show when you purchase our recommendations. Thanks! Special Guest: Marcus Blankenship.

Show 500!  SPaMCAST 001 went live on Sunday January 28, 2007 at 9:28 PM - it has been a great journey from then to now!  The first interview was a two-parter with Will McKnight. Give it a listen at https://bit.ly/2lryNaC.    Show 500, SPaMCAST 500, Episode 500, #500  (I will probably say that 500 more times this week) features our interview with Marcus Blankenship.  Marcus and I talked teams and what makes a team good. We also discussed who owns the behaviors and values of a team. Team are core to most software development, enhancements, and maintenance. Understanding how teams work and how to make them work better makes ABSOLUTE sense.  Marcus provides great thoughts and advice on agile teams. I am thrilled that Marcus joined the SPaMCAST family on show 500! Marcus helps CTO’s fire-up their dev teams by creating an environment where everyone can fully participate in problem solving.  He helps great engineers become the great leader that their team deserves. Links: Join Marcus's list for articles on leading developers: https://marcusblankenship.com/ Tech Leader Fortune Cookies: https://marcusblankenship.com/tech-leader-fortune-cookies Twitter: https://twitter.com/justzeros Medium: https://medium.com/@justzeros Book: Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team.  Listeners of the podcast will receive 30% off with discount code SPAMCAST. Show: UNSTUCK: The Tech Leader Q&A Show - Live call-in show for technical managers every Friday at 10am Pacific. Re-Read Saturday News This week we are full ahead in our re-read of L. David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around! We continue the story of the USSN Santa Fe with Chapters 22 and 23.  These two chapters focus on how an organization’s legacy can be used to shape deliberate actions and why principles have to be tied to behavior and decisions to be useful. Pick the next book in the re-read series.  I will cut the poll off on 2 July. [polldaddy poll=10037032] Current Installment: Week 15: A Remembrance of War and Leadership at Every Level - https://bit.ly/2Imi5lS Previous Installments: Week 14: Part IV and Under Way for Deployment - https://bit.ly/2tcXprb Week 13: Final Preparations -  https://bit.ly/2t1OgSn Week 12: Underway for San Diego and All Present and Accounted For - https:/ /bit.ly/2J7AkRx Week 11: Mistakes Just Happen and We Learn - https://bit.ly/2IMZYL2 Week 10: A New Ship and We Have A Problem - https://bit.ly/2IUJ6RL Week 9: Up Scope! and ”A New Ship” - https://bit.ly/2KfDZbS Week 8: Under Way on Nuclear Power and ”I Intend To . . .” – https://bit.ly/2rnvkgx Week 7: Change, In a Word and Welcome Aboard Sante Fe – https://bit.ly/2r5l1hk Week 6: I Relieve You - https://bit.ly/2F7C5ag Week 5: Call to Action and Whatever they tell me to do! - https://bit.ly/2IXZugS Week 4: Change of Course and Frustration - https://bit.ly/2qbPzgK Week 3: Pain and Business as Usual - https://bit.ly/2qfd74g Week 2: Forward and Introduction - https://bit.ly/2H8K4Jg Week 1: Game Plan - https://bit.ly/2HgCdqW Next SPaMCAST SPaMCAST 501 will feature our essay on Hard Questions and Agile Metrics.  We will also have columns from Jeremy Berriault and Susan Parente!

SPaMCAST 499 will feature our essay on trust and coaching. Coaches are among most effective tools used to help teams improve. In SPaMCAST 496 – Sam Laing I highlighted the need for trust between a coach and the team or person they are coaching. Without trust, a coach will not be very effective.  Two powerful and related tools! In the rocker, as they call it stock car racing is Wolfram Müller. Wolfram co-authored Hyper-Productive Knowledge Work Performance, The TameFlow Approach with Steve Tendon.  We talk about Chapter 23 titled Reliable Scrum and Reliable Kanban. Wolfram can be found on LinkedIn at https://bit.ly/2qXvgnw Anchoring the cast is the Software Sensei, Kim Pries.  Kim discusses software safety. Tools and software languages can have a major impact on software safety and all of our lives depend on software these days! Re-Read Saturday News In week 14 of our re-read of L. David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around!  we begin Part IV of Turn The Ship Around and tackle chapter 21. The first three parts of the book bring the story to the beginning of the deployment of the Santa Fe.  Part IV picks up from that point! Part I - Starting Over - This section profile why Marquet is frustrated with leader-follower model of leadership. Part II - Control - This section profiles the change and command and begins to layout Marquet’s vision of a leader - leader model of leadership. This section delivers mechanisms for control in a leader - leader model. Part III - Competence - This section builds on the story of how the Santa Fe prepares for deployment and Marquet lays out mechanisms for building technical competence, the second leg of his leader-leader model. Part IV - Clarity - This section completes the leader - leader model, focusing on the third leg of the leader - leader model, clarity. What will be the next book? Options are Release It and The Checklist Manifesto.  Both are great . . . thoughts? Current Installment: Week 14: Part IV and Under Way for Deployment - https://bit.ly/2tcXprb Previous Installments: Week 13: Final Preparations -  https://bit.ly/2t1OgSn Week 12: Underway for San Diego and All Present and Accounted For - https://bit.ly/2J7AkRx Week 11: Mistakes Just Happen and We Learn - https://bit.ly/2IMZYL2 Week 10: A New Ship and We Have A Problem - https://bit.ly/2IUJ6RL Week 9: Up Scope! and ”A New Ship” - https://bit.ly/2KfDZbS Week 8: Under Way on Nuclear Power and ”I Intend To . . .” – https://bit.ly/2rnvkgxWeek 7: Change, In a Word and Welcome Aboard Sante Fe – https://bit.ly/2r5l1hk Week 6: I Relieve You - https://bit.ly/2F7C5ag Week 5: Call to Action and Whatever they tell me to do! - https://bit.ly/2IXZugS Week 4: Change of Course and Frustration - https://bit.ly/2qbPzgK Week 3: Pain and Business as Usual - https://bit.ly/2qfd74g Week 2: Forward and Introduction - https://bit.ly/2H8K4Jg Week 1: Game Plan - https://bit.ly/2HgCdqW Next SPaMCAST SPaMCAST 500 will feature our interview with Marcus Blankenship we talked teams and what makes a team good.  We also discussed who owns the behaviors and values of a team.

Welcome to the Process Hacker News, your weekly roundup of useful news and updates from Process Hackers who have been guests on Hack the Process with M. David Green. This week we’ve got joyful insects, fearless beauty, conscious parenting, and more. Enjoy! For all the links, check out the show notes: http://www.hacktheprocess.com/process-hacker-news-for-april-10-2018/ Events On April 14, Ron Lichty will be interviewed by Marcus Blankenship, where Ron will speak about the manager’s role in Agile. You can also register for Intro to Agile: Managing Teams for Faster Productivity which will be led by Ron on April 30 in Seattle. Media Mark Silver reflects on Passover, liberation, and tight places in a recent video he published. Beauty shouldn’t compromise safety, and Sidehustle Pro guest Melissa Butler proves that with her product line, The Lip Bar. Host Nicaila Matthews interviews Melissa about her cosmetic journey from the kitchen sink to Target shelves. Parents and teachers, teach your kids the value of empathy through active listening. Maria Dismondy has some good tips for you. Building a business and giving up employment seems to be everyone’s goal, but Adam Warner co-founded FooPlugins and still went out to get a job. Curtis McHale chats with Adam about living the dream while being employed on The Smart Business Show. Everyone would love to learn the secrets behind juggling a 9-5 while building a business on the side. Omar Zenhom reveals the steps he recommends bon the $100MBA Show. Don’t you wonder why ants are so determined? Paula Jenkins talks about her observations on how ants practice joy every day on the Jumpstart Your Joy Podcast. On the Business Owner’s Freedom Formula Podcast, Pam Wasley shares her knowledge about starting, scaling and selling a business. Writing Process Street, a process checklist tool founded by Vinay Patankar, was used in a case study with Megaventory. If you’re interested in advanced supplier management, read on! Marketing automation sequences can help you keep in touch with your clients. Josh Haynam, founder of the quiz builder, Interact, writes about this topic. Recommended Resources Parents are invited to register for two programs led by Dr. Shefali Tsabary, A Deep Dive into Conscious Parenting from April 20 to 22 and Silent and Guided Meditation Retreat from April 22 to 25. Heather Chauvin follows the work of Dr. Shefali. On Book Marketing Mentors, Author Jeff Goins, recommended by Curtis McHale, shares how to use the best of Michaelangelo’s top entrepreneurial skills. Jeff is also joining the speaker line-up of The Thing, a workshop that helps you make your ideas into reality, happening in Orlando Florida from May 16 to 20. Wim Hof, mentioned by Tara Byrne, is one individual with mind-blowing accomplishments in the area of personal physical development. There’s a new video which features Wim Hof’s superhuman training by Vishen Lakhiani of Mind Valley, who was recommended by Michelle Dale. Thanks for checking out this Process Hacker News update from Hack the Process. If you liked what you saw, please leave a comment to let us know what processes you’re hacking.

Leadership in Tech Podcast Series | Episode #49 "Process, Pace, and Prioritization: An Interview with Marcus Blankenship" | DATE: 03-15-2018 GUEST FEATURE: Marcus Blankenship Episode #49 on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZohXTHH5jc For more info on Marcus Blankenship www.marcusblankenship.com www.twitter.com/justzeros www.medium.com/justzeros *( For comprehensive show notes go right to www.techonramp.com/leadership-in-tech/ )* ABOUT LEADERSHIP IN TECH & TECH ONRAMP The Leadership in Tech Podcast is a part of The Technology OnRamp, a tech and leadership development nonprofit. Tech OnRamp is a 10-week, educational program that prepares candidates for their first, or one of their first, jobs in the technology sector. If you or someone you know is interested, contact Zac Ruiz or Paul Maslany for more info, or to start right away by setting up a short 15 minute interview! Official Website- www.techonramp.com YouTube Channel- www.youtube.com/channel/UC3SjMwjSc92NpjLQT-J7pWA Facebook- www.facebook.com/techonramp Twitter- www.twitter.com/techonramp Zac Ruiz Salt, IO - www.salt.io Salts Twitter- twitter.com/WeAreSaltIO Zacs Twitter- twitter.com/zacsalt Zacs LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/zacharyruiz/ Errol Doebler Leader 193 - www.leader193.com Leader193 Twitter - twitter.com/Leader_193 Errols LinkedIn- www.linkedin.com/in/errol-doebler-b29ab338/ Check out Zac, Errol, Paul, and any guests past or present on the Pod Database for podcasters, their guests, and their producers and assistants. www.poddb.me NEXT EPISODE: Our 50th Episode! 3-22-2018! Tune in! CREDITS HOSTED BY: Zachary Ruiz, Errol Doebler, Paul R. Maslany (Intro's) PRODUCERS: Paul R. Maslany, Kara Wood MUSIC: Big Big Boss by Nicolas Falcon

As your store grows, you will inevitably have to hire freelancers, consultants, or employees for your tech team. It can be an intimidating process that leaves you struggling to keep projects on track. You don't have to learn how to be a great manager the hard way. Our guest today wants to help you level up faster. Marcus Blankenship gets paid to coach overwhelmed technical managers. He's managed a variety of teams and is going to talk us through how to hire better. Today's episode will leave you feeling dramatically more confident and capable in hiring for your Shopify team, and you'll see better performance from your team. — Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via Email Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on iTunes Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast on Stitcher Subscribe to The Unofficial Shopify Podcast via RSS Join The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook Group Work with Kurt — Learn: The number one mistake store owners make when hiring freelancers What red flags to work for? Why we're more forgiving at the beginning of the relationship What's the most important attribute to look for when hiring a freelancers? When to use a “reset conversation” How to set expectations The questions to ask to ensure a project goes well Why questions are a part of any professional doing their job responsibily How can you be sure you won't get screwed How & why to avoid The Winner's Curse Links Mentioned: MarcusBlankenship.com Join Marcus' list and learn how to manage with his free newsletter Recommended Reading: Crucial Conversations Recommended Reading: Humble Inquiry 2017 Ecommerce Holiday Email Marketing Guide Are you putting off creating a holiday email marketing plan because planning emails is a chore? In this no-fluff executive summary, you'll learn every opportunity to send holiday emails, how to write subject lines that get opened, how many emails to send to maximize revenue, and one tip to not annoy customers. ☞ Get the 2017 Ecommerce Holiday Email Marketing Guide now If you are less than 100% satisfied with your purchase and email me saying so, I will immediately click the Refund button and return 100% of your money, no questions asked.

Talking about how to deal with when technical effort is underestimated. Thanks to Marcus Blankenship for the great article.

Technical coach, author and former coder Marcus Blankenship (https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusblankenship) stops by the People Stack to talk about how much you should code as a manager, how to better handle your 1:1s, surviving your battlefield promotion to manager and finding role models other than a pointy-haired boss. Special Guest: Marcus Blankenship.

Marcus Blankenship is a management consultant, trainer and executive coach for software managers and leaders. He helps companies hire the right people, create the right culture, and set up the right process which achieves their goals. Managing a team isn’t something learned in college. In fact, his clients often tell him “I never prepared for this role, I always focused on doing the work.” If you’re ready to improve your leadership, process and team then you need to know Marcus.   What you’ll learn about in this episode: Why you must identify your high and low performers Why you shouldn’t be a passive-aggressive leader Why you can’t hire anyone you can’t fire Structured management: why you can’t set people free without management and why you need to set up strong management systems when your agency is small Why consistent one-on-one meetings are so crucial What happens in your employee’s head when you cancel a one-on-one meeting How to create a safe environment where the people below you are willing to give you the feedback you need Why you shouldn’t let feedback sit more than a week Marcus’ one-on-one framework guide Ways to Contact Marcus Blankenship: Website: marcusblankenship.com Email: marcus@marcusblankenship.com Book: "7 Habits that Ruin your Technical Team" Marcus’ One-on-One Meeting Framework Email list with articles on running your team, daily management tips and guides for running your team: marcusblankenship.com/list We’re proud to announce that Hubspot is now the presenting sponsor of the Build A Better Agency podcast! Many thanks to them for their support!

Technical leads and managers work hard to hire the best people, choose the best tools, implement the best process, and deliver great software. Unfortunately, our actions too often sabotage our best efforts, producing frustrated teams, poor software quality and driving away our best developers. It happens to a lot of us but, fortunately, we have some strategies to teach you that can greatly reduce the amount of damage caused by these mistakes. In today's webinar I've teamed up with Marcus Blankenship, a recurring guest of this channel. We wll discuss all the ideas behind the habits that ruin a technical team and how you can avoid them, based on his new book, with the same name. "This book is a mirror for you to reflect on your leadership efforts. It is not for the feint of heart, but for those who are willing to bravely ask, "Do I have this habit?" Based on my 20 years of managing software teams, and coaching other technical leaders, this book points out 7 ways you could be unwittingly hurting your programmers, eroding trust and undercutting motivation and productivity." (Amazon.com) Wanna know more? Watch this video and find out! 7 Habits That Ruin Your Technical Team: https://simpleprogrammer.com/7habitsruin Asking Your Employer For Feedback: Should You Do It?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2ddvt1xVN8

Marcus Blankenship talks with Gerald Weinberg about software errors, the fallacy of perfection, how languages and process can reduce errors, and the attitude great programmers have about their work.  Gerald’s new book, Errors: Bugs, Boo-boos, and Blunders, focuses on why programmers make errors, how teams can improve their software, and how management should think of […]

Marcus Blankenship talks with Josh Doody about salary negotiation. Topics include a framework for thinking about salary negotiations, how you can know what you’re worth, the employers view of salary negotiation, and missed negotiation opportunities. Also discussed are common fears about negotiating and how to overcome them, common mistakes during negotiations, and how negotiation makes […]

Marcus Blankenship talks with Josh Doody about salary negotiation. Topics include a framework for thinking about salary negotiations, how you can know what you're worth, the employers view of salary negotiation, and missed negotiation opportunities. Also discussed are common fears about negotiating and how to overcome them, common mistakes during negotiations, and how negotiation makes your more desirable as an employee.

Marcus Blankenship, Management consultant, trainer and executive coach for software managers and leaders. He helps you hire the right people, create the right culture, and set up the right process which achieves your goals. Read more at http://marcusblankenship.com Contact: https://holdingbay.co.uk/contact-us/ Tweet: https://twitter.com/cliffnotespod/ This episode of Cliff Notes: Ask a leader Podcast founder of Holdingbay and host Tristan Bailey talks to Marcus Blankenship about his career with 14 years in Jeld-Wen, International manufacturers of doors, windows. Building internal management software, and rise from a junior to becoming a manager and learning to help teams succeed. Which as the web became popular started their website and then moved to run his own agency and now teach software team managers to be better and have more of a team. Show Notes: https://holdingbay.co.uk/cliff-notes/podcasts/1/  

Meet our next guest, Marcus Blankenship. Marcus began his career with some formal education but was never able to finish the degree. Yet, he used the knowledge and skills that he gained to learn how to learn programming languages, and you can too. Marcus' experience provides for a unique story because he experienced some serious struggles...

Meet our next guest, Marcus Blankenship. Marcus began his career with some formal education but was never able to finish the degree. Yet, he used the knowledge and skills that he gained to learn how to learn programming languages, and you can too. Marcus’ experience provides for a unique story because he experienced some serious struggles...

02:51 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 03:09 - Panelist Worst Boss Experiences 13:06 - Developer Anarchy vs Having a Hierarchy SE-Radio Episode 253: Fred George on Developer Anarchy The Valve Playbook 20:57 - Transitioning Managers Impostor Syndrome 26:05 - Manager Influence 28:33 - Management vs Leadership Leader-Member Exchange Theory 34:37 - Interpersonal Relationships and Happiness 38:24 - What kind of feedback do managers want from their employees? Timesheets 46:17 - Am I manager material? Am I ready to go into management? 48:06 - Following a Technical Track 51:55 - Why would anyone ever want to be a department manager? Picks A Plain English Guide to JavaScript Prototypes (Aimee) Oatmega (Aimee) Luck by Tom Vek (Jamison) The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-Step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems by Bruce Tulgan (Marcus) React Rally Call for Proposals (Jamison) React Rally (Jamison) Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman (Dave) Soft Skills Engineering Podcast (Dave)

02:51 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 03:09 - Panelist Worst Boss Experiences 13:06 - Developer Anarchy vs Having a Hierarchy SE-Radio Episode 253: Fred George on Developer Anarchy The Valve Playbook 20:57 - Transitioning Managers Impostor Syndrome 26:05 - Manager Influence 28:33 - Management vs Leadership Leader-Member Exchange Theory 34:37 - Interpersonal Relationships and Happiness 38:24 - What kind of feedback do managers want from their employees? Timesheets 46:17 - Am I manager material? Am I ready to go into management? 48:06 - Following a Technical Track 51:55 - Why would anyone ever want to be a department manager? Picks A Plain English Guide to JavaScript Prototypes (Aimee) Oatmega (Aimee) Luck by Tom Vek (Jamison) The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-Step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems by Bruce Tulgan (Marcus) React Rally Call for Proposals (Jamison) React Rally (Jamison) Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman (Dave) Soft Skills Engineering Podcast (Dave)

02:51 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 03:09 - Panelist Worst Boss Experiences 13:06 - Developer Anarchy vs Having a Hierarchy SE-Radio Episode 253: Fred George on Developer Anarchy The Valve Playbook 20:57 - Transitioning Managers Impostor Syndrome 26:05 - Manager Influence 28:33 - Management vs Leadership Leader-Member Exchange Theory 34:37 - Interpersonal Relationships and Happiness 38:24 - What kind of feedback do managers want from their employees? Timesheets 46:17 - Am I manager material? Am I ready to go into management? 48:06 - Following a Technical Track 51:55 - Why would anyone ever want to be a department manager? Picks A Plain English Guide to JavaScript Prototypes (Aimee) Oatmega (Aimee) Luck by Tom Vek (Jamison) The 27 Challenges Managers Face: Step-by-Step Solutions to (Nearly) All of Your Management Problems by Bruce Tulgan (Marcus) React Rally Call for Proposals (Jamison) React Rally (Jamison) Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman (Dave) Soft Skills Engineering Podcast (Dave)

While today’s guest, Marcus Blankenship, is currently a solo-consultant, he started out like many of us at a big corporation where he worked for 14 years. He knew that wasn’t the path for him and worked his way out by starting a web design agency with a friend. When building that agency up to a team of over 20... The post Agency Advantage 14: Marcus Blankenship on how to effectively build and manage your team appeared first on Hubstaff Blog.

Check out Ruby Remote Conf: coming to you live in March! Buy a ticket or submit a CFP!   02:17 - Phil Spitler Introduction Twitter GitHub Blog 03:20 - Panel opinions: What makes a good developer? 07:26 - “Successful” vs “Great” Developers Growth Mindset 12:45 - Mentors: What to they epitomize? Maintainability 14:37 - How do newbies find/identify mentors? 17:45 - When Becoming Great Starts to Matter 27:51 - How People “Arrive”; Necessary Skillsets Code Archaeology 30:51 - Bloc.io 36:44 - As a mentor, where do you draw the line? Ruby Rogues Episode #240: What Makes a Good Manager with Marcus Blankenship 40:57 - As an educator: How important is it to do hands-on work of your own? The Freelancers’ Show Episode #184: Goals and Productivity (unreleased at time of publication) Picks Rat-a-Tat Cat (Jessica) Sorry Not Sorry IPA (Jessica) Amazon Fire Kids Edition (Avdi) The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free by Neil Fiore (Avdi) Intercom Central® 246 - Four Channels HOME Power-line Intercom System (Chuck) Fathead (Chuck) spitfire (Phil) Bloc's Software Engineering Track (SET Program) (Phil) Kyle Cease (Phil) Phil’s coworker’s Ariel's man crush on Avdi (Phil) Carol Dweck: The Power of Believing That You Can Improve (Phil) Wile Kratts (Children's Science Show) (Phil) MindSet by Carol Dweck (Chuck)

Check out Ruby Remote Conf: coming to you live in March! Buy a ticket or submit a CFP!   02:17 - Phil Spitler Introduction Twitter GitHub Blog 03:20 - Panel opinions: What makes a good developer? 07:26 - “Successful” vs “Great” Developers Growth Mindset 12:45 - Mentors: What to they epitomize? Maintainability 14:37 - How do newbies find/identify mentors? 17:45 - When Becoming Great Starts to Matter 27:51 - How People “Arrive”; Necessary Skillsets Code Archaeology 30:51 - Bloc.io 36:44 - As a mentor, where do you draw the line? Ruby Rogues Episode #240: What Makes a Good Manager with Marcus Blankenship 40:57 - As an educator: How important is it to do hands-on work of your own? The Freelancers’ Show Episode #184: Goals and Productivity (unreleased at time of publication) Picks Rat-a-Tat Cat (Jessica) Sorry Not Sorry IPA (Jessica) Amazon Fire Kids Edition (Avdi) The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free by Neil Fiore (Avdi) Intercom Central® 246 - Four Channels HOME Power-line Intercom System (Chuck) Fathead (Chuck) spitfire (Phil) Bloc's Software Engineering Track (SET Program) (Phil) Kyle Cease (Phil) Phil’s coworker’s Ariel's man crush on Avdi (Phil) Carol Dweck: The Power of Believing That You Can Improve (Phil) Wile Kratts (Children's Science Show) (Phil) MindSet by Carol Dweck (Chuck)

Check out Ruby Remote Conf: coming to you live in March! Buy a ticket or submit a CFP!   02:17 - Phil Spitler Introduction Twitter GitHub Blog 03:20 - Panel opinions: What makes a good developer? 07:26 - “Successful” vs “Great” Developers Growth Mindset 12:45 - Mentors: What to they epitomize? Maintainability 14:37 - How do newbies find/identify mentors? 17:45 - When Becoming Great Starts to Matter 27:51 - How People “Arrive”; Necessary Skillsets Code Archaeology 30:51 - Bloc.io 36:44 - As a mentor, where do you draw the line? Ruby Rogues Episode #240: What Makes a Good Manager with Marcus Blankenship 40:57 - As an educator: How important is it to do hands-on work of your own? The Freelancers’ Show Episode #184: Goals and Productivity (unreleased at time of publication) Picks Rat-a-Tat Cat (Jessica) Sorry Not Sorry IPA (Jessica) Amazon Fire Kids Edition (Avdi) The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free by Neil Fiore (Avdi) Intercom Central® 246 - Four Channels HOME Power-line Intercom System (Chuck) Fathead (Chuck) spitfire (Phil) Bloc's Software Engineering Track (SET Program) (Phil) Kyle Cease (Phil) Phil’s coworker’s Ariel's man crush on Avdi (Phil) Carol Dweck: The Power of Believing That You Can Improve (Phil) Wile Kratts (Children's Science Show) (Phil) MindSet by Carol Dweck (Chuck)

02:05 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 02:52 - Pain and Difficulties of Moving From Programming to Management Identity Credibility 10:50 - Image and Identity (Cont’d) Expectations Role Models 19:16 - Management; Making the Move to Management Aikido “Everybody deserves a good manager.” 23:37 - How do you know if you have a bad manager? 27:13 - Feedback; Tone of Communication 33:54 - What should you do when you get promoted to a management position? Nix Production Code Tasks Meet with Your People (Give Feedback)     One-on-one Meetings with Team Members Zero Surprises Evaluation Policy Evaluation Forms Goals and Incentives Reviews for Self-Reflection Get Your Own Feedback 48:25 - How do you know you are doing a good job? Skip-Level Reviews Growth of your team and members Signs of Loyalty 51:06 - What if you don’t want to move into a management role? Picks The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz (Jessica) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Jessica) Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Chuck) JS Remote Conf (Chuck) Ruby Remote Conf (Chuck) Freelance Remote Conf (Chuck) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield (Marcus) Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost by Johanna Rothman (Marcus)

02:05 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 02:52 - Pain and Difficulties of Moving From Programming to Management Identity Credibility 10:50 - Image and Identity (Cont’d) Expectations Role Models 19:16 - Management; Making the Move to Management Aikido “Everybody deserves a good manager.” 23:37 - How do you know if you have a bad manager? 27:13 - Feedback; Tone of Communication 33:54 - What should you do when you get promoted to a management position? Nix Production Code Tasks Meet with Your People (Give Feedback)     One-on-one Meetings with Team Members Zero Surprises Evaluation Policy Evaluation Forms Goals and Incentives Reviews for Self-Reflection Get Your Own Feedback 48:25 - How do you know you are doing a good job? Skip-Level Reviews Growth of your team and members Signs of Loyalty 51:06 - What if you don’t want to move into a management role? Picks The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz (Jessica) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Jessica) Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Chuck) JS Remote Conf (Chuck) Ruby Remote Conf (Chuck) Freelance Remote Conf (Chuck) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield (Marcus) Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost by Johanna Rothman (Marcus)

02:05 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 02:52 - Pain and Difficulties of Moving From Programming to Management Identity Credibility 10:50 - Image and Identity (Cont’d) Expectations Role Models 19:16 - Management; Making the Move to Management Aikido “Everybody deserves a good manager.” 23:37 - How do you know if you have a bad manager? 27:13 - Feedback; Tone of Communication 33:54 - What should you do when you get promoted to a management position? Nix Production Code Tasks Meet with Your People (Give Feedback)     One-on-one Meetings with Team Members Zero Surprises Evaluation Policy Evaluation Forms Goals and Incentives Reviews for Self-Reflection Get Your Own Feedback 48:25 - How do you know you are doing a good job? Skip-Level Reviews Growth of your team and members Signs of Loyalty 51:06 - What if you don’t want to move into a management role? Picks The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz (Jessica) The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan (Jessica) Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Chuck) JS Remote Conf (Chuck) Ruby Remote Conf (Chuck) Freelance Remote Conf (Chuck) The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by Steven Pressfield (Marcus) Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost by Johanna Rothman (Marcus)

00:52 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 01:38 - Moving Towards Management Having Difficult Conversations/Don’t Hire Friends or Family 09:12 - Firing/Letting People Go ABC = Always Be Communicating 20:04 - Growing your business doesn’t always mean hiring more people. Being the “Lone Wolf” or “Small Pack” 26:16 - Quality Control 28:33 - How do you find, hire, and keep good people? Try Before You Buy 30:52 - Trust and Communication “Self-Managing Individuals” 48:26 - Checking In and Setting Milestones Picks Drip (Jonathan) 100 Percent Up Front (Jonathan) Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco (Reuven) MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins (Chuck) Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans by Rush Limbaugh (Chuck) Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby (Marcus) The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister (Marcus)

00:52 - Marcus Blankenship Introduction Twitter Blog 01:38 - Moving Towards Management Having Difficult Conversations/Don’t Hire Friends or Family 09:12 - Firing/Letting People Go ABC = Always Be Communicating 20:04 - Growing your business doesn’t always mean hiring more people. Being the “Lone Wolf” or “Small Pack” 26:16 - Quality Control 28:33 - How do you find, hire, and keep good people? Try Before You Buy 30:52 - Trust and Communication “Self-Managing Individuals” 48:26 - Checking In and Setting Milestones Picks Drip (Jonathan) 100 Percent Up Front (Jonathan) Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco (Reuven) MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom by Tony Robbins (Chuck) Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims: Time-Travel Adventures with Exceptional Americans by Rush Limbaugh (Chuck) Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management by Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby (Marcus) The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister (Marcus)

In this interview, Marcus Blankenship talks about going from developer to entrepreneur.

Checkout RailsClips and Angular Remote Conf!   01:03 - Panelist Experiences With Hiring 03:00 - Hiring Virtual Assistants (VAs) Mandy = @therubyrep / DevReps Virtual Staff Finder 10:02 - Hiring For Design Work / One-Off Projects Wet Frog Studios (Aaron Mahnke) Podcast Motor Elance Fiverr Odesk => Upwork 16:23 - Hiring Subcontractors Infinum 27:58 - Hiring Employees Picks Uber (Reuven) Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson (Reuven) Morgan’s Paradox for Freelancers (Eric) Marcus Blankenship (Jonathan) The Mortified Podcast (Jonathan) Developer On Fire Episode 017 - Charles Max Wood - Get Involved and Try New Things (Chuck) Elevator Saga (Chuck)

Checkout RailsClips and Angular Remote Conf!   01:03 - Panelist Experiences With Hiring 03:00 - Hiring Virtual Assistants (VAs) Mandy = @therubyrep / DevReps Virtual Staff Finder 10:02 - Hiring For Design Work / One-Off Projects Wet Frog Studios (Aaron Mahnke) Podcast Motor Elance Fiverr Odesk => Upwork 16:23 - Hiring Subcontractors Infinum 27:58 - Hiring Employees Picks Uber (Reuven) Consider the Fork: A History of How We Cook and Eat by Bee Wilson (Reuven) Morgan’s Paradox for Freelancers (Eric) Marcus Blankenship (Jonathan) The Mortified Podcast (Jonathan) Developer On Fire Episode 017 - Charles Max Wood - Get Involved and Try New Things (Chuck) Elevator Saga (Chuck)

In this interview, Marcus Blankenship talks about quitting his job and how you can do it too.

In this episode, I talked with Marcus Blankenship of CREO Agency. If you don't live in a tech hotbed like SF or NYC and you worry that your location will hinder your ability to recruit clients, you won't want to miss this episode.I also mentioned my upcoming Skillshare course on value pricing proposals. Here's the link.