People Managers

Delegate Delegation — An Upgrade to the Common Delegation Practice of Micro Management

Many managers (and individuals) assume that load balancing their team members is the manager's job. That's a pretty bad idea. And I'll explain why.

Personal Dave Posts

You Must Find a Passion Project - AKA How to Avoid Being a Boring Human

I'm absolutely off topic today. Like if being on topic was a road in downtown Seattle, I'd be hiking up Rattlesnake Ledge today. Which, if you don't know, is far away.

Mid Career

Resolve Risk First - Why Complexity and Ambiguity Not Effort Should Dictate Your Focus

Too often we resolve the hardest work first, instead of the riskiest. A walk through of why that's a mistake.

Early Career

How to Both Embrace and Defeat Imposter Syndrome

Our skills aren't perfect. Moving past our weaknesses is how we discover our ways to add value, and improve along the way.

Mid Career

Inside a High-Severity Outage: A Late Night Sev-2 at Amazon

A detailed narrative of how we communicated about, worked on, and resolved a technical mess we created.

Organizations

13 Tech Career Misconceptions — Things I Wish I'd Learned Earlier

Misunderstandings about performance, promotions, influence, and leadership that most people only realize late in their careers.

People Managers

Heard of Design Patterns? How About Behavior Patterns.

Recognize patterns in management to be able to solve issues, and deliver results.

Mid Career

Writing and Speaking Clearly and Concisely - Upgrading Your Communication

Communicating takes practice and skill. Learn the ingredients to high-quality communication.

Late Career

Why You Should Give Feedback — And How to Deliver It Without the Awkward Crying

The why and how to write feedback for others.

Organizations

RTO is a lie, 3rd party misinformation, the source of my anecdotes, and how (not) to make decisions. An article of many topics!

Sometimes writing about one topic just isn't good enough.

Late Career

A Time When I Was Tricked Into Being Honest — Bringing Facts Into Work Discussions

Moving discussions from emotional interpretations to facts and metrics can move a group from conflict to problem-solving.

Late Career

Do Jerks Get Hired For Management Roles, or Does Management Create Jerks?

I assumed that certain rude personalities were promoted to leadership positions. Then I both found myself being promoted, and adopting some of those behaviors.