on principle
If you find yourself arguing for something “on principle” and laying out complex reasoning, you probably stumbled at the outset and already lost.
Author: Lincoln
building habits
I’ve been reflecting a lot on my inability to develop habits and unpacking what’s underlying that. It’s never too late for a new strategy!
employment hiatus
I had exactly four months between gigs, so I’ve recounted how I invested that time off of anyone’s payroll.
fifty albums
Friends know I’m a bit of an album fanatic, with 70s-era Pink Floyd responsible for the initial push. These are 50 of my favorite albums, without repeating artists.
autumn links
As autumn deepens into winter with the first snow of the season here in Detroit, these are recent articles that have deepened my understanding of the world at the intersection of community, the open web, polity, & learning.
valuing stakeholders
Generalists solve many early business problems, but you can summarize most of that list as “effects of inexperienced management.” By building a team of stakeholders instead, you create opportunities that might just save your organization one day.
collaborative authority
Web 2.0 enabled collaboration on a scale the world has never seen, but it only granted us collaborative labor, not collaborative authority… except for Wikipedia.
five beliefs
I’ve been thinking about Web-based community software for most of my life and have refined five beliefs for what must come next.
evaluating value
I find many senior software and IT folks don’t know how to talk about the value of tools. I frequently get asked by peers, inside my company and outside it, why I can successfully get tool expenses approved when theirs get rejected. Here’s my simple framework.
mister secretary
A brief recounting of the power of the written word across my life and career. Leadership isn’t in a title, it’s in your words, and you should beware anyone suggesting you outsource them in the name of efficiency.
debugging everything
What is debugging, really? I’ve thought about it for most of my life and never really come up with a satisfactory answer until today.
reviewing performance
Several executives over my career have sat me down, looked me in the eye, and implied I was a naive fool for trusting my employees. Fuck ’em.
framed shackles
My annual “spring is here” post, wherein I connect a 6-year old task I finally completed to our country’s history, my home, and the work ahead of us.
privileged practice
It was quite a roller coaster of a week. Remembering what a privilege certain moments are can help even out the ride.
career goals
I don’t understand career goals. Is my career a list of job titles, start dates, or projects I delivered? I don’t think so.
governance retreats
It’s going to be especially important where your time, attention, and money goes over the next four years. These are a few areas I’m prioritizing.
that word
I’ve semantically overloaded the word “leadership” to the point that I occasionally forget how far removed my definition is from the popular lexicon.
first resignation
This is a reflection on my first resignation in late 2006, nearly 18 years ago, that I found today while looking for a document in my attic.
owner insecurity
A hallmark of a healthy company is keeping incentives aligned with ownership. The only way to scale this is to focus on alignment, not control.
legal entities
Working relationships between humans are far more durable & valuable than those between people and a legal entity. What’s a company, anyway?
strategic capacity
In a small & fast engineering team, it’s challenging to quantify work being done. There’s so much to do, and it’s difficult to categorize. How can you determine your capacity for addressing your strategic roadmap when stakeholders ask about it?
successful people
If you start your career debasing yourself in drudgery for someone else’s profit, you won’t acquire the leadership & critical thinking skills you need and you’ll suffer for it.
discussing violence
It’s very difficult to talk about violence even among close friends over drinks, let alone on social media or other online venues. We need to anyway.
community signal
Patrick O’Keefe of the long-running show Community Signal asked me to join him in a discussion that ranged from private equity buying community software, community data ownership, and the stakeholder challenges of community software roadmaps.
weighted web
Building on the Web these days often feels like a game where you see how much weight you can put in a boat before it sinks, but you get $1 for every pound you add instead of how many days it stays afloat.
psychological safety
Psychological safety is the most powerful productivity multiplier. Without it, no one can take ownership of their piece of the company and make it better.
devaluing quality
Software building is a team activity, and QA is an indispensable stakeholder on a well-functioning team.
feudalistic software
Have you ever noticed nearly all Web software is feudalistic? I share three important pieces from academics that capture the issue.
spring reflection
I’m thinking about how easy it is to get locked into a path. We tell ourselves lies about who we are every day and make choices based on those lies.
transition time
We usually ignore transition time. If your focus needs to transition, make space for that.
predicting leadership
What would you say is the single best predictor for success for an engineering leader? They prioritize listening to the voices with more direct context and they are actively building their understanding of the problem set.
executive bullies
How does an executive bully operate in the workplace? Knowing the signs can help clarify your decisions and make the experience less traumatic.
myself again
Leadership skills are the water I swim in and it took a couple years in the corporate wilderness to remember that.
grief caldera
Before Kyle died, I didn’t understand what anxiety was.
victory laps
Moments worthy of victory laps come from stories which have a beginning, middle, and end. If you’re not actively communicating these stories to a team, eventually startup-era victory laps fade into memory.
2021 fiction
A catalog of media I consumed in 2021, with a sentence or two about each.
deferred conflict
I’m the kind of person that waits to see what the third person decides before I open up on the first attacker. I’m being physically assaulted and I still try to deflect or defer, to see where things go, before I hit the gas.
least evil
A few months ago, an old friend called me the “least evil person” they know. I keep thinking about it.
context proximity
The most egregious error I see leaders make frequently is to assume they have more context than the folks doing the work.
first love
When I was in middle school, I fell in love with a boy. I’m pretty sure he liked me back. It’s a simple narrative, but it took me most of my life to understand it.
porter deux
10% of all commits on the decade-old project are now mine from this past month. So, things are moving briskly.
the fight
As the power of the Web grew, we allowed that power to become concentrated in the hands of a very few. And unregulated power invariably corrupts, and corruption kills dreams.
here again
I swear to God that all I’ve ever wanted was / A little bit of everything, all of the time
nitro porter
A week ago I forked a decade-old open source project and Nitro Porter was born.
spilled puzzles
If you’re half-done with a jigsaw puzzle and flip the table it’s on, what happens?
interviewing humans
Many folks approach interviewing like an infinite avocado cart and they aren’t quite sure how to find a ripe one. Maybe if you have more people squeeze it you’ll figure it out?
fallen leaves
Leaves from the vine / Falling so slow
Like fragile tiny shells / Drifting in the foam
Little soldier boy / Come marching home
Brave soldier boy / Comes marching home
round two
Part of my process of writing here is to work out the foundational concepts and what I actually believe in today.
search products
This is a brief technical review of open source search index products currently available, summarizing what I learned about them in a couple days of research.
startup power
If you don’t invest in engineering leadership early you’re burning your salary budget. Once it’s time for process, you need someone who empowers your engineers and helps them operate safely rather than imposing rules that grind your releases to a halt.