Christof Damian: Friday Links 21-21

mountain bike in front of bench and mountains

#WorldBicycleDay

Some new articles about remote work. This is becoming interesting for a lot of companies now, as office are reopening and employees are wondering what it will mean.

Also some good thinking about testing and how to embrace your personality as a leader.

Management

TBM 23b/52: Cognitive Load "“My head hurts” is valid. It is a signal."

Do you know your communication style at work? Take our quiz to find out - silly quiz, but apparently I am dominant

Your Insecurities Aren’t What You Think They Are [Podcast] - embrace your insecurity, they might give you a kick in the bum

#112 Adam Grant: Rethinking Your Position [Podcast] - try changing your mind, often

Conway’s Law - good summary on this

TBM 21/52: Building Stuff to Close Deals - OK sometimes, but not as a rule

Product Ownership Evolution Model (mit Tim Klein) [Podcast, German] - about the roles of product owners

What How Why - Ron musing about why he is doing what he is doing and about Scrum

Remote Work

Remote-first vs. remote-friendly: what's the difference? - and not just remote-only

Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home - some do

Don’t Let Employees Pick Their WFH Days - good point. You have to focus on what you want to gain from WFH & days in the office and make the best of both.

"32% of employees say they never want to return to working in the office. [...] . At the other extreme, 21% tell us they never want to spend another day working from home.

The empty office: what we lose when we work from home - a bit long winded and weird

Engineering

On the Diverse And Fantastical Shapes of Testing - Martin Fowler on testing

Testing in the Twenties - Tim Bray on testing

Early learnings from an engineering manager on a fully remote team - long post and a good summary on how to approach it

GitOps is a placebo - I wouldn't go that far, but it certainly isn't anything new

Uptime Monitoring: A One-week Project, a Decade In the Making - nice write-up of this new feature and how it builds on previous work

Technology

Have I been Pwned goes open source, gets FBI data feed - curious to see what comes next

Police find bitcoin mine using stolen electricity in West Midlands - not illegal yet

US Soldiers Expose Nuclear Weapons Secrets Via Flashcard Apps - oops

Producing a trustworthy x86-based Linux appliance - tricky, but possible

Ruby For Good - I plan to donate some of my skills, but probably not my lacking Ruby ones

Cycling

World Bicycle Day 3 June - the bicycle day that is not on drugs

‘It’s the journey, not the destination’: cycling writer rolls out on 4,900km odyssey - what a dream trip

Cycling is ten times more important than electric cars for reaching net-zero cities - and it makes cities nicer for people

‘Barcelona wants to become a 100% cycling city’ - and a nice city, there is still a bit room to improve

Wheelie interesting Maps trends for World Bicycle Day - insights from Google Maps

Environment

G7 nations committing billions more to fossil fuel than green energy - no surprise at all. I blame Germany.

Urbanism

How Parking Destroys Cities - I confess a while back I never though of this, but now I am just annoyed by the rows of cars everywhere when space in cities is so rare.

Congestion in highways when tolls and railroads matter: Evidence from European cities [PDF] - paper on highways expansion in cities, congestion pricing and transit policies

Our findings confirm that the induced demand is considerable smaller in cities with road pricing schemes and congestion decreases with public transportation expansions..

We can’t beat the climate crisis without rethinking land use - we need liveable cities

The evidence is in: low-traffic neighbourhoods are popular - the opponents are louder though

Random

Forbes Announces Its First-Ever “50 Over 50” List, A Definitive Lineup Highlighting Women Shattering Age And Gender Norms - this is great on many levels and not only because I am old

Anti-vaccine lies get more bizarre by the day - at least they are entertaining for the rest of us

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 leak - could this be my next laptop?

Any amount of alcohol consumption harmful to the brain, finds study - poison is poison, even in moderation

American Airlines joins Southwest in delaying return of alcohol sales - poison on a plane

Classic Cassette Tapes Are Making a Comeback - top tip: don't follow his blog, it is abyss of nostalgia

German voters’ view of personal wealth causes problems for the left - I already believed that most people think they are richer than they are, but apparently the rich also think they are middle class. In the US everybody is obviously a potential Millionaire

Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie - but also: so convenient.

Pay Transparency: Commission proposes measures to ensure equal pay for equal work - this could make the job market of the future in Europe quite interesting.

Donating My Time to Grow a VC-Funded Company: Why I Quit Mentoring at Plato - I kind of expected them to be paid. I never joined though.

‘Who are we performing for?’: Will McPhail on the strange art of small talk - smalltalk is indeed a performance and I am rubbish at it

The NGO working a 28-hour week - I want this!

English councils start banning smoking outside pubs and restaurants - I wonder if I should start a health / teetotal sectuon