Many topics this week. I love the hack of a stolen laptop, the post of cascading goals made me think, good climate news cheered me up and check out random for some fun and funny stuff.
Leadership
Setting your engineers up for success: how Skyscanner created greater clarity in our competencies and pathways to progression - interesting approach, kind of similar to my favourite one from Etsy
TBM 41/51: Why Goal Cascades are Harmful (and What to Do Instead) - interesting. I always thought top down, cascading goals were a good thing. I have to think about this more.
Dealing with Top-Down Projects - tricky, but good suggestions
What do you need to know to be a manager? - “Can a lack of subject-matter expertise even be an asset for a leader?”
Seven things you need to know about retaining engineering talent - good summary of the usual reasons why people leave or stay
Engineering
How we merged our main repositories into a single monorepo - I love monorepos!
From Stolen Laptop to Inside the Company Network - that is quite a hack
Technology
An X11 Apologist Tries Wayland - nice, someone, please convince the Cinnamon people
The SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats Mid-year Review - “At this point we can reasonably claim that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs”
Work
Hacker Stations - more workspace porn
I Tried A ‘Body Doubling’ App To Help With Focus – It’s Weird But It Works - it’s like pair programming for random tasks
Environment
Rain in Catalonia will be more frequent, violent and unpredictable in future - lovely
Barcelona bat el rècord històric de nits tropicals: 114 nits sense baixar de 20 ºC [Catalan] - new record of number of nights above 20C in Barcelona: 114 this year
Been Angry [Comic] - me too
Earth is now our only shareholder. - Patagonia changing its business ownership to a trust, with the money made being invested in fighting the climate crisis
Reasons for (cautious) optimism: the good news on the climate crisis [Opinion] - that cheered me up a bit
Cancer breakthrough is a ‘wake-up’ call on danger of air pollution - “Smoking remains the biggest cause of lung cancer, but outdoor air pollution causes about one in 10 cases in the UK”
Urbanism
Crossing the Street Shouldn’t Be Deadly (but it is) [YouTube] - I get so annoyed by short pedestrian light phases
Renovation works to ‘detouristify’ Barcelona’s La Rambla to begin on October 3 - I am curious about how successful this will be
Uphill battle: How Spain’s Pamplona helped cyclists overcome steep slopes - elevators for bikes
How Japan Won its ‘Traffic War’ - public transport, less parking and smaller cars
Why Empty Offices Are Becoming Apartments in Texas’s Big Cities - this is great, we need housing, people want to live in cities and cities need people
France’s answer to Banksy: the anonymous street artist filling potholes with colourful mosaics - this is brilliant
Small prefab backyard home feels more livable than McMansions [YouTube] - more housing, even if it is for the rich
Random Trombones
There is no song that cannot be improved by Trombone Champ - I am not convinced, I even want to play it, but the videos are great.
Gratitude [Comic] - me looking at some mindful tips
Bikes4Ukraine - The Story So Far [YouTube] - still lacking donations
Longest single-volume book in the world goes on sale – and is impossible to read - it’s a (stolen) comic
‘Gifs are cringe’: how Giphy’s multimillion-dollar business fell out of fashion - I always hated GIFs, it isn’t just the kids
Cats on Synthesizers in Space - exactly what it says on the tin
Air Force Releases List Of What’s In Its Famous ‘Petting Zoo’ Threat Training Facility - I never thought about this, but it clearly makes sense to have this.
Dismantling Schengen – half a year at a time - oh, bugger
Other Links
- Links — Prints 2.9 from Ben Crowder