2021 in books

2021 in books

As with many things 2021 didn’t quite go to plan with my reading. There were too many distractions in the first half of the year, but I got some reading time in the second half. The lack of holidays, flying and commuting didn’t really help overall. As always this is a mix of light fiction and books related to work, which this year mostly means management. ...

3 January 2022 · 4 min · Christof Damian
Friday Links 21-39

Friday Links 21-39

I enjoyed the in depth look into Pablo Escobar’s hippos. Amazing what kind of wide ranging effect this has on the country. The whole Log4j incident was also fun to follow. Management How To Start A Book Club At Work - beginners guide Hiring (and Retaining) a Diverse Engineering Team - lots of insights from different leaders and companies Why it’s difficult to build teams in high growth organisations - because of changes ...

17 December 2021 · 3 min · Christof Damian
Friday Links 21-38

Friday Links 21-38

Short one this week. I did catch up with my podcasts, but not many made it to the list. I found the article series on architecture and devops interesting reads. Management Operator’s Manual #2: What Does It Mean To Let Others Lead? - with Ali Schultz & Jerry Colonna [Podcast] - “The simplest way to trust is to let go of perfection. If you can allow the team to make mistakes then it’s a lot easier to trust.” ...

3 December 2021 · 2 min · Christof Damian
Friday Links 21-37

Friday Links 21-37

I am a bit disillusioned with our response to the climate crisis and the pandemic. So I am focusing on other things like management, nostalgia and urbanism! Management Agility ≠ Speed - common misunderstanding well explained My experience with Re-organising a team - some good tips to keep in mind for the next time Please dogfood your software interview homework - this are some awful examples. Who would work on a test for a whole day? ...

26 November 2021 · 3 min · Christof Damian
Friday Links 21-36

Friday Links 21-36

The Great Resignation has definitely arrived in mainstream media. Lots of good podcasts this time, about career paths, engineering organisations, learning and weird Chinese cassette tape culture. Management Managing Platform Teams: How to Build and Structure Platform Engineering? [Podcast] - interview with Camille Fournier going into details of platform teams Why all new managers want to quit - I feel you ...

12 November 2021 · 5 min · Christof Damian