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Showing posts from 2021

Year in Review - 2021 Edition

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 Holy buckets, 2021 went by quickly. Felt like 6 months! It's been a very rollercoaster year, but here we are, about to reenter the start/finish line and preparing to start another year. Starting off, we are still going through this pandemic, that has had an impact on my goals and aspirations, more on that later. Regardless, on to the review section. Looking back, I didn’t ever publish my 2021 goals, LOL. My general ideas were to stay healthy, and read a book per month. I read a lot more this year, reading 10 books (2 shy of my goal of 1 per month), and even enjoyed a few non-fiction books this year. We built a house and moved to a new town (still near Madison) and have really been enjoying the quieter life and funny enough my walking score here is way better than when I lived on the edge of the city. This was pretty huge part of the first half of the year. My kiddo started preschool and is really having a lot of fun. I did a bit of working out, more on that later. I took on a new ...

Taking a hard look at the workday

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We now live in a different world. As such management should have to take a hard look at what the typical workday looks like. What once was easy, like joining meetings during the weekday during core hours is now difficult due to having to be a parent first, or help a neighbor that is fearful to go to the store, or assist your parents who are in the highly vulnerable population. Keep in mind that some are more impacted than others. With those thoughts pressing, I decided to do a bit of research on asynchronous work habits. I started my research with some podcasts. One I came across was  Making Sense with Sam Harris, episode 194: The new future of work . In this podcast the CEO of Automattic (the company behind WordPress) elaborates on how he shaped his business and how they operate. His goal from the start was to create an environment that is fully autonomous teams, and by far, he has succeeded. Some key aspects that I took away that I intend to take forward to my work is: Make meeti...

A Bit About Succession Planning

So I have some news, after much consideration, I've decided to submit my notice to Sonatype. I've grown tremendously during my 3 years at Sonatype. First joining as an Engineering Manager working with wonderful people on the Lifecycle product. Then later moving on to the Director of Engineering for the complicated sub-systems of Sonatype. I’ve met some wonderful people on the way, and they will be forever missed. I have no doubt that they will be successful in their business market going forward and I wish them all the best. That being said, it's time to start walking through succession planning. I really want to set my successor up for success when I leave. I'm reminded of a great episode of The Office (US) when Dewight gets fired for the episode. After a few weeks, things start falling apart in odd ways. The plants start dying, the fridge starts smelling, etc... He didn't get the chance to hand off the things he did around the place before he left.  During my time...