what i'm reading: Jan 3

Finally got my CI pipeline working with Hugo! Next step is to start writing something other than link posts, but in the meantime: here’s another link post.

Even if no one else ever reads these posts this habit has proven invaluable to me, because it’s easier for me to share that interesting article I was reading the other day now that I have a list of them online.

• A few chapters into Dare to Lead by Brené Brown (audiobook). Still searching for a business book that does not set my teeth on edge with business jargon. This is not that book.

• Charity Majors offers advice on how to get your developers on board with observability

• There’s a lot to unpack in this article about the new AI-optimized chip Vivienne Sze demoed at “an elite, invite only conference”. There’s currently a race to design more efficient chip architectures for specific algorithms—interesting. Given the many Twitter threads I’ve seen about the lack of ethics in AI, also a candidate for Dystopian Hellscape Weekly, along with: Amazon has a secret tech conference full of technology co-funded by DARPA.

• I am utterly captivated by the idea of architecture decision records as envisioned by Michael Nygard (this longer interview explores how they worked in practice.) I want to retroactively add ADRs to every project I’ve ever had to do forensic psychology on to piece together architecture decisions out of terse changelist messages.

• Nora Jones suggested this study comparing structured briefings to checklists in medical emergencies could apply to software incident response. The study showed that briefings and checklists were about equally effective in getting to a correct solution within a limited time, but that briefings might allow people to feel more in control of what to do next if the first thing doesn’t work.

• Rereading Esther Derby’s piece on control vs creativity a few times and thinking about how to internalize this and relax my own tendency to want to control instead of delegate.

• Chris McDermott wrote about creating maturity models using Wardley Maps and the Cynefin framework which was intriguing enough that I finally watched a video from Simom Wardley to figure out WTF a Wardley Map is, because I keep seeing the design/architecture/leadership parts of my Twitter feed talking about them. Video was entertaining but I still don’t know how to make such a map. Also haven’t looked up Cynefin.

• Chelsea Troy wrote about setting boundaries for professional venting and I immediately shared it with a bunch of friends.

• I’m starting to think a lot about what I want my career to look like down the road, so Anna Shipman’s post on finding a higher-level tech job was interesting.

• On a similar note someone linked to Keavy McMinn’s post about what technical leadership roles can look like and I immediately remembered reading it before, but I still read it again.

• I made it through Sanjay Sha’s The Reliability of Enterprise Applications but it was a bit of a slog.

• I might have accidentally made some new goals under the pressure of this time of year, and I’m reflecting on Christina Wodtke’s personal OKR process to see if it might suit me.

• While compiling this list I ended up reading more of Chelsea Troy’s blog, and this post from her Listening series about deliberate inquisition seems like something I specifically need to practice.