DPL Reading List – April 7, 2017
Here are some of the articles we’ve been reading around this office this week.
The Pros and Cons of Competition Among Employees (Thanks to Brian Zimmer for recommending this article) – “Competition between employees may be an inescapable part of many people’s work lives and can lead to improved performance. But if leaders want to ensure that competition unleashes creativity and not unethical behavior, they must resist the temptation to lead through fear.”
77% of sites use at least one vulnerable JavaScript library (Thanks to Jarrod Wubbels for recommending this article) – “The other week a paper was released that reported that about 37% of sites included at least one JavaScript library with a known vulnerability. When we wrote about the findings, we mentioned that we thought that the reality was almost certainly worse. It is. Much worse, in fact.”
Could Working Remotely Be As Bad For Your Health As Smoking? – “The paper’s coauthor and professor of psychology at Brigham Young University, Timothy Smith, explains that loneliness isn’t itself a killer, but rather a gateway to a number of mental health problems, such as depression and anxiety, as well as physical health problems, such as inflammation, a weakened immune system, and insomnia.”
Mythbuster’s Guide to Accessibility – “The services and products we create need to be accessible to everyone. Too often, we’ve seen others neglect accessibility because of some common misconceptions that make things difficult. In this post, we’ll debunk these myths, so you can easily create universally accessible content.”
When “gut feelings” aren’t enough: using data to plan your product roadmap – “Getting started with data is daunting, and there’s a popular concern among some founders and leaders that being too data-driven might cause you to compromise your vision. That somehow looking at the data will force you to change course radically and lose track of what you really are or where you’re going. The good news is: that doesn’t happen. Data doesn’t have the power to reshape your product or business from the ground up. It’s simply an objective tool you can use to measure progress—and that’s nothing you should be afraid of.”
CSS Is Not Broken – “Coding in any language is hard before you spend time mastering it. Imagine what your JavaScript would look like if you never took the time to learn about OOP or functional programming principles? Just because you expect CSS to be easy, doesn’t mean the language is broken when you find it is not.”
The one question to ask yourself the next time you’re facing a difficult problem – “The secret to resolving conflict, as first outlined by former Toyota executive Taiichi Ohno, is to “ask why five times.” The idea is that by continuously asking “why,” you’ll eventually arrive at a root cause and learn from the problem—the better to avoid repeating unproductive or ignorant behavior.”
