Scarlet Ink

Scarlet Ink

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Mid Career

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.
 • Dave Anderson
KPIs Gone Wild: Cautionary Tales of Lost Customer Obsession
How using KPIs and metrics as proxies, goals, or games leads us away from real customer value.
 • Dave Anderson
From One-Way to Two-Way Doors: Rethinking How We Make Big Decisions
How to recognize the differences between one-way and two-way doors. A way to think about risk and decision-making.
 • Dave Anderson
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.
 • Dave Anderson
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.
 • Dave Anderson
Writing and Speaking Clearly and Concisely - Upgrading Your Communication
Communicating takes practice and skill. Learn the ingredients to high-quality communication.
 • Dave Anderson
Failure is Necessary for Achievement and Growth — Why Success is Dangerous for Learning
You can only succeed if you are willing to fail. You can only learn if you are willing to be terrible at first.
 • Dave Anderson
You Can't Schedule Creativity: Putting Inspiration Into Your Outlook Calendar
Creation can't be forced, but it can certainly be encouraged gently.
 • Dave Anderson
Start With Your Vision — Not With Goals. Measure What Really Matters.
Goals Without Vision Are Worse Than Useless. They can lead you in an expensive wrong direction.
 • Dave Anderson
Don't Let Others Run Your Life — Cut Your Schedule Like a Slasher Movie
If you don't make hard choices to focus on your top priorities, then you're choosing to fail at your top priorities.
 • Dave Anderson
A Three Topic Article — Interviewing, Multiple Choice Management, and My Holiday Gift Guide
Sometimes you have a single topic, sometimes you have three. Today is a 3-fer.
 • Dave Anderson
Six Reader Questions About Meetings, Feedback, Communication, and Ideas
I regularly receive questions over email and in comments on my newsletter. I decided to answer a few of them in detail.
 • Dave Anderson
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