March update
If you’ve been wondering why Debugging Work went quiet for a while, wonder no longer!
I spent the first half of 2024 talking to a lot of people about work, especially email overload, Slack anxiety, and staying on top of things in a deluge of digital communications.
That led to an idea on how to help. After a lot of iterations, prototypes, and false starts, things are almost ready.
In a few days, I’ll be officially launching a new software product that helps with wrangling the overwhelm and dread. It doesn’t take much snooping online to find out more, but stay tuned here or my LinkedIn feed for the official announcements.
In the meantime, some good links (including two new episodes of the Debugging Work podcast):
🤔 Jamar Parris on quitting his job in tech to take a sabbatical: Jamar Parris started his career on the technical side, working as a full stack engineer and systems architect. About 10 years ago, he switched from engineering to product management and has worked in companies like PayPal and Braintree. The pandemic led to some reevaluations for Jamar and his husband, which led them to quitting their jobs at the end of 2022 and taking a sabbatical.
🎧 Lynn Osler on building a strong remote first culture: Lynn Osler is an HR and Culture Specialist. She has worked in a variety of sectors from retail startups to large health care organizations. She is currently a human resources generalist at Pagefreezer, a remote-first software company. In this episode, Lynn shares some of the tools and practices they use to create a strong remote culture and safeguard the well-being of team members.
🤾🏽 Seeking perfection and fear of failure can hold us back: Charly Haversat challenges our obsession with perfection and challenges us to think more and look deeper into why we are after perfection and how “good enough” is actually good enough!
📝 No, You Don’t Get an A for Effort: From the world’s favourite organizational psychologist, professor Adam Grant’s opinion piece in the NYT: “High marks are for excellence, not grit.”
Every teacher should be rooting for students to succeed. In my classes, students are assessed on the quality of their written essays, class participation, group presentations and final papers or exams. I make it clear that my goal is to give as many A’s as possible. But they’re not granted for effort itself; they’re earned through mastery of the material. The true measure of learning is not the time and energy you put in. It’s the knowledge and skills you take out.
- Derek