Subscribe
Sign in
Home
Learning
Interviewing
Categories
Archive
About
Latest
Top
Discussions
What's On My Mind After 4.5 Years of Writing a Newsletter
A bit of this and that.
Dec 29
•
Dave Anderson
18
1
1
The Easiest Way to Get a Yes at Work
Why most career asks fail (if you even ask) and how making your requests smaller, clearer, and time-bound dramatically increases your odds of getting a…
Dec 22
•
Dave Anderson
28
1
Your Strength Got You Here, but Doing The Opposite Will Take You Farther
Your natural tendencies work brilliantly in the right context, but real growth comes from learning when to flip them.
Dec 15
•
Dave Anderson
30
2
Twelve Career Lessons They Don’t Put in Onboarding
A few hard-earned lessons about people, politics, consistency, and the parts of work we pretend aren’t part of the job. But really are.
Dec 8
•
Dave Anderson
62
3
Confidence: A Legal Performance-Enhancing Drug for the Office. 7 Manipulation Tips for Winners.
You don’t need permission to lead. You just need to look, sound, and act like a person others instinctively follow. Because, yes, we're all sheep.
Dec 1
•
Dave Anderson
45
2
3
November 2025
Please, for the Love of All That’s Holy in Corporate America, Stop Saying These 8 Things at Work
Doing your work absolutely matters. But you can easily sabotage yourself by saying the wrong thing. These are a few phrases that quietly sabotage your…
Nov 24
•
Dave Anderson
41
6
Think Your Skip-Level Is for "Visibility"? That’s Cute. It’s Not.
Levels in an organization garble communication. A skip-level meeting is an opportunity to communicate clearly. Most importantly, it helps low-level…
Nov 17
•
Dave Anderson
61
1
3
5 School Habits That Make You Worse at Your Job
Being a good student might make you a poor worker. Here are a few habits and behaviors that might serve you well in the classroom but poorly in the…
Nov 10
•
Dave Anderson
45
4
If Your System Never Fails, That’s the Real Failure
Investments in operations should be at a minimal level that maintains the systems in an acceptable state forever. Poor operations are clearly bad news…
Nov 3
•
Dave Anderson
27
6
2
October 2025
The AWS Outage—Lessons on Worst-Case Scenarios
How bad is the worst-case scenario of your systems? I suspect it's not as bad as the DynamoDB system.
Oct 27
•
Dave Anderson
31
8 Ways to Stop Being Crushed by Infinite Work
The better you get, the more work finds you. These skills help you survive success without losing your mind. Plus an early life lesson from my Dad.
Oct 20
•
Dave Anderson
54
3
1
The 4 Major Impacts of Amazon's Decentralization and Ownership Model
Amazon is decentralized and has a strong focus on ownership. This causes various positive and negative impacts. Let's walk through those impacts, and…
Oct 13
•
Dave Anderson
29
1
This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please
turn on JavaScript
or unblock scripts
