DPL Reading List – April 22, 2016

Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.

Consider Offboarding: Letting Users Leave In Peace (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “Obviously there’s no way to understand and quantify the users who simply never log in again, but for those users who are willing to go through an offboarding process, we shouldn’t manipulate their emotions, certainly, but I want to set the bar higher: let’s make leaving an experience as humane as signing up.”

How Intuit Built A Better Support System For Intrapreneurs (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “Most companies claim to support entrepreneurial behavior — but their employees are not so sure. The research speaks volumes: Only 20% of employees in an Accenture study said their managers encourage entrepreneurial ideas. Another survey showed that 70% of successful entrepreneurs developed their big idea while working at an established organization and then left to commercialize it on their own.”

I’m A Boring Programmer (And Proud Of It) (Thanks to Cassey Lottman for recommending this article) – “I’ll admit it — instead of ego-filled, high-risk, thrill-seeking badasses who can conjure up magical solutions, I have much lower key role models. I’m more akin to a librarian, scientist, artist, and carpenter. Compared to a rock star-ninja-hacker-wizard, those labels do sound a little boring. But you know what? There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.”

Optimization Considerations: Measure At The Browser (Thanks to Matt Babcock for recommending this article) – “This week I took a few days and re-built my blog. It was previously a WordPress instance on a small host with CloudFlare in front. It is now a statically generated, open source, managed via git, hosted on GitHub pages, and still proxied through CloudFlare. This post is my attempt to explain my reasoning and process in optimizing it along the way.”

Unintuitive Things I’ve Learned About Management (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “I love my job. I find it hard and crazy and wonderful because it is all about people. Interacting with people. Understanding people. Getting the best out of people. Realizing that everyone is imperfect but in our imperfections, we can still come together to do more than we ever could alone.”

Optimize For Tiny Victories (Thanks to Matt Babcock for recommending this article) – “I’m mentally breaking it up in work sprints, little dependencies, but in order to stay motivated we’re making sure each sprint — whether it’s a day or an hour — is a victory as well as a sprint. What can we do to not just move the ball forward but also achieve something. Something small, to be clear. But something we can be excited about, something we can tell mommy about, something we can feel good about.”

Microsoft’s Inspired New Workspaces Boost Creativity And Collaboration (Thanks to Matt Babcock for recommending this article) – “Remodeling the buildings, much like designing software, means finding a balance between preserving the legacy while also adapting and evolving for the changing way in which people work, Clarkson said.”