Page 2 of 14

The next time I hear “Nothing changed on our side…”

Just a reminder that I have worked in the IT field for 25+ years (ok everyone say it. you are old.) and in that time there are things that come up often. This time it was a production outage of one of our internal build software products. The developer’s immediate reaction was “Nothing changed on our side” When something stops working the immediate reaction is ‘it worked yesterday.’ It could be your car, the fridge, your cell phone, anything. In technology the notion that if a piece of software is in production that means it is bug free. One side note, in the 90s I heard a story from a large tech company that bug free was designated on software if something had less than 50,000 known bugs.  

On this day we had a production issue with something that had been running for a long time. The first thing most managers ask (including myself) is “has anything changed?” And in a chorus what do you think the answer is? “Nothing on our side…” The first thing about that statement is pushing blame on someone else. It immediately is saying that you had nothing to do with something ‘you’ did.  

The next question is, has anything changed on outside systems etc. This could be the operating system, user desktop, upstream feeds etc. Of course, in many cases there usually are a few changes. There are always security fixes to server and desktops, so changes happen. Upstream systems can do updates (hopefully they test with you but sometimes they do not) but that is always a possibility. 

Next step in debugging, can we reproduce it in a test environment? Try to figure out how to setup a test environment exactly like production and see if you can replicate the error. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But hopefully it will help the team figure out what is wrong or point in the direction of debugging. If you are lucky and have unit tests you can run them, and if you are lucky (I am not) you have UI automated tests and can run those. All to see if you can find the issue. 

Now if you are not bored already as technology people are like “tell me something I do not know” and non-technology people are thinking “what does this have to do with me.” Read on, and it will. 

In the beginning I mention that every day people see this when their fridge breaks, the car stops working or the cell phone dies. What I did not say is about yourself. When you are not feeling great, injured, sick, struggling or just not working the way you should what are the steps? Our first reaction is often blaming some outside force. We can blame work, our partner, our kids, something we ate etc. Our mind instantly defends ourselves and looks for the outside force that is to blame. 

I mentioned previously being wrong is like being punched, and as soon as you feel a certain way your immediate reaction is to figure out what punched you. I also stated previously when I take my dog to the veterinarian when she is not well, they often ask ‘What are you feeding your dog?’ but a doctor only asks what is wrong. Where am I taking you? 

As this blog is introspective, I am asking this about myself. I found myself not in the shape I wanted to be, and I stated the list of excuses: I was sick, my daughter was asking me to go for ice cream a lot, I was going out to eat a lot with friends/family etc. Where I had to back away from my first thought and dig deeper. I was the one picking my meals (sick or healthy) I was the one who chose to get ice cream and they are all choices I made. Comparing myself to the production piece of software, my body was the same thing as it was long ago. The change that was going on was the choices I was making.  

I realized something simple is that I should not judge myself on my first thought. That I need to be more responsible for my second thoughts. My second thought was how I did this before and started to make those changes again. And in making those changes I found myself heading back in the direction I wanted. I am not there yet, but I am chugging away at it.  

Now back to the technology issue, there was code written a long time ago and as would be our luck had no unit tests as well as difficult to replicate. The problem was with our code. The team’s first thought was to blame others (nothing changed comment) but our next actions were to dig and find if it is. I know people often get frustrated, but getting the team away from the defensive mode into the debug mode is what a good manager does.  

The next time you hear the following with something goes wrong “Nothing has changed on our side.” Do not make yourself responsible for your first thought, but hold yourself responsible for your second, third etc. thoughts. And it is those thoughts that need to drive you to solving problems. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

Use your vacation…. but as a vacation!

For the longest time managers have always told me to make sure I use my vacation time. In fact, many of the times I knew it was more company line than what they meant. With the amount of work that we had to get done, the hours needed to put in taking vacations often were not something the manager wanted us to take. Over the years finding the right job and manager vacations were something that were taken, but often with the words to ‘recharge’ or ‘prevent burn out.’ 

Now let us think about that. Taking a vacation to do those things means that your job is so overwhelming or stressful, that the only escape is to leave and go away. More importantly, going on vacation is somehow magically repairing the damage that has been done at work. Wow, that better be some magical vacation, it better be the vacation of your dreams, no delays, no issues etc. On the day of your return somehow all the problems are gone, and you can hit peak performance at work. 

Somehow that just sounds stupid writing is it and I am sure it sounds worse reading it. I am going to make a simple statement, there is no such thing as work life balance, there is just life. Any thinking otherwise is the same as believing the magical vacation will bring you back. Your work is as much a part of your life as so is your home life, where you volunteer, the friends you see and the places you go.  

There are a lucky few who love what they do so much they do not work for a day in their life. For others we work to provide for our families, try to have a better life or even just pay the bills. Now instead of dreading that and trying to find balance if we inject that it is life, what differences can happen?  

First, we can build good relationships at work. When I was learning how to manage bands (yes, I took classes in that) there was this notion you needed to network. One thing I learned well working at Loria Music was building relationships. When I started at a large bank I used these skills, and in my current job there is a running joke ‘Larry knows a guy…” What the network has turned it to is not a business set of contacts but good relationships. What I originally thought was necessary to get ahead in life was more becoming part of my life. 

Next, we can change how we think about stress. For years I though stress was a killer and a problem. This is how I thought about work stress, as in trying to be an athlete, stress, or pressure as it is called was used as a motivator. And to win one needs to handle the pressure and use it as a positive instead of a negative. Stress should be a motivator at work, it should bring out the best in you. There are studies that show, yes stress is just that. If you learn stress is positive, you will start treating it that way.  

Finally understand how to deal with failure. My previous post I talked about succeeding at everything means you are not taking any risks. But there is something even more important (and needs its own post) that failure is not treated the right way. Failure in some cases is not an option (aka a surgeon) but sometimes they do. Failure needs to be treated in a straightforward way of how we prevent it from happening again or reduce the possibility of it happening. If we find the wisdom in failure, instead of coming home from work saying you had a difficult day you come home with the thought more of I learned something and need to work on applying it.  

To get back to my original point, a vacation should be just that a getaway to enjoy yourself. It should not be something to recharge. There needs to be something that you do (it is not your company/bosses’ role) to recognize your life and to make the most of it. It is not easy, unlearning the bad history of work will take effort and time but the reward at the end is wonderful. I was asked this past week why I stayed at the company so long, it was easy to answer. Leaving for other places means leaving the community I built, the ability to use the challenges at work to get better and know how to improve myself from mistakes. Now the stressful thought is where should I go? 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

AI is more like humans than we thing… Ok in one aspect

Over the past few weeks there have been articles about regulating AI (well Large Language Models but honestly only the tech people care.). There are also a few articles about people asking to have their information removed, other lawsuits from authors saying their information were used in training, would they ask for their data to be removed. Now not going to get into is permitted use, but more about how the AI is human like in one thing. 

Humans have something that is causing lots of issues, not just now but appears to be for the longest time. Unlearning is a struggle. When people learn something and for years that learning is reinforced it gets embedded in their brains. When there is a change, or even challenge to that knowledge there is an instinct to push back against it. The point when someone is told they are wrong it feels like they are being punched.  

Now Large Language models cannot feel pain, but they do have an issue. When ingesting information (web page, document etc.) they are converting the text into ‘tokens’ and giving those tokens a numeric representation. Those numbers get linked together. Reversing that information out to find that exact point of some text and removing it is well impossible. So LLMs struggle to do the same thing that humans have, unlearning.  

So, one option when it comes to LLMs is to train it from scratch all over again. This could be costly. For humans there is an art of unlearning, and it is a skill that we should work on. Just like learning it is something that we need to practice getting good at it. Now, LLMs the unlearning of things is a bit more difficult. There are a few studies, here, here and here. I am not going to deep dive into them, as I will leave that to the reader to deep dive. 

It really is amazing that LLM and the GPTs that are built on top of them can produce sentences, paragraphs, and code. What is surprising is that both struggle to unlearn. And though there are now studies and ways for humans to unlearn, the only apparent way for an LLM to unlearn is to start from nothing. To reach GAI do machines need to be able to unlearn? Have we stumbled on an update to the Turing test? Or is it possible that our brains are not powerful to understand our own brains? 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them.

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

I have 20+ posts in draft, and I am not freaking out..

Well I am not freaking out yet. This is acceptance of knowing my limitation and keeping my expectations in check. I try to have a high bar to what I post, and I try not to post quantity vs. quality. I have taken weeks off, months off and instead of just slapping one of these half written and post it. Of course, this breaks all of the rules of building an audience and a blog.

But this is where acceptance of ADHD has come. In the middle of writing one post I may have an idea and start another post leaving the first partially written. Of course in the middle of that new post I am doing research and get another idea and bounce to a third. During the writing this post which was started in June of 2023 I had another idea and did not finish this origincally Now jumping back to it, hoping to finish my thoughts. Or Not…

One thing that challenged me, and often still does is the thought of doing something, anything it has to be perfect. Of course having ADHD you get distracted, your brilliant ideas are not as easy to execute, and what looks brilliant in your mind doesn’t match what the reality is. This struggle stopped me from doing many things in the past, in fact it is partly why this became a blog vs a book. Part of the fear is the book would have to go past editors etc. A blog the only person I need to get past is me.

The book also in my mind sounded better than the first few blog posts. I had never written long form before. I wrote mostly technical documentation for work, and occasionally wrote something on the side. I needed to break two things, first my ability to actually finish a post, and second understand the perfect is the enemy of good.

I posted about previously about perfection prevents you from getting work done. Now there are times when perfection is needed, think heart surgery, accounting and filing taxes and others. But sometimes things are good enough. In the Agile development practice there is a notion of Minimal Viable Product(MVP). This allows you to shit something that isn’t perfect. Recently (July of 2023 for those reading years later) Meta releases on new product called Threads which is a great example of an MVP. Please not I am not endorsing the product, the company or am invested in it. This is just an example of an great MVP, the saw a competitor having some issues and released it before it has all the features they want.

So why not use this notion of MVP with other things, including my writing? This simple agile principal has allowed me to publish ideas that are 80 or 90% complete. I don’t worry about perfection, in fact I like to challenge my readers to fill in blanks, finish the thought, continue the conversation. The question what can you do that is good enough, and iterate to get better. Even things like doing the lawn, maybe cut it in the AM, take a break to the edging later and the weeds a few days later. It has freed my mind to doing something.

The MVP broke my perfection, knowing I can update or make changes later. But I started to see this notion of good vs. perfect even more often. Like people painting their house, washing their car, folding laundry etc. Sometimes hiring a professional is a good idea, but

The other thing I learned is that not only do you need to break things up this notion of MVP, but they also need a deadline. If there is no deadline then often well it does not get done. There were a couple of studies 1 and 2 that came up with different results. Why am I not surprised. This is the ‘everyone is the same’ or ‘everyone fits in a mold’ thinking. What I ma talking about is what works for me. If I set a deadline for myself (or it is externally given) I shoot to make that deadline. It it 100% the greatest work of all time, no its an MVP. I can then give me deadlines to update and fix it. But, without the deadline I can always find something else to occupy my time, or give in to the Calvin and Hobbes Theory of last minute panic. If you can spare the time, please read the whole comic strip, its a classic.

So as I complete this months later than I started, I failed to give myself a deadline on this particular post but it does read like an MVP. I give myself a little break as my goal for 2023 was a post a week, and though yes i have 20+ in draft, the weekly deadline has me often taking one out of draft and finishing it. In this case, this is the lucky winner. It is about what works for you, and trying it out. If this does not try another method to get the tasks you need done. Failure here is a lesson in how to get yourself more productive. For me, as I reread this it is MVP and yes it is out on time. I am happy.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

Paying attention is harder than it looks, but it maybe the secret to happiness

As a youngster (in the 1970s/80s) like may others we wanted attention, we wanted people to notice us. Yeah there are the few introverts who did not feel that way. We wanted feedback, and avoiding certain stigmas. Aka we would rather be seen as rebellious than dumb. Kids bragged about how successful their parents were. For four years I attended a private school, and that was even more competitive for status. As an adult some people grew out of this competition, sadly others did not.

Fast forward to the present, and now its not just kids but it appears that there is a larger push for the notion of getting attention. Wait, you are writing your blog isn’t that an act of attempting of getting attention. I debate this with myself, but if I really wanted attention I would turn these into video shorts, TikToks etc. I would post the blog on other social media sights. But, often I do find myself almost jumping on a hot topic.

I started writing more personally and posted it well to feel I expressed myself. I do not have a way to like, not push for it. I like feedback from my friends who happen to read it, and have changed things, gotten topics from them, but its not my driver.

But there was a time that on Facebook and Twitter I did fall into the trap. The ADHD of getting ‘likes’ on a post or interaction were dopamine hits that were wonderful. The engagement grew if the idea pushed out got a reaction. What Facebook learned is what other media had known is that fear and anger got engagement. The difference is this notion of getting attention could scale, and anyone could garner attention. In fact, a business started up giving ranking of people who had more followers/engagements. Most users of social media didn’t care. Those looking for the high for the likes drove something interesting.

When writing these posts, I find myself doing the opposite. I am paying attention to myself, listening to my brain, my body and introspecting on my thoughts. My distractions seem to fall to the wayside, no Adderall needed. No I don’t use drugs for my ADHD yet, but don’t need them when writing. In fact, its one of the few times I do not use an pomodoro timer I find myself with focus. I find some clarity in writing, a drift away in where I can just type.

So I am paying attention, can focus and happy, why can’t I figure out how to do the same in other situations? If happiness comes from this notion of being able to pay attention versus trying to get attention why don’t I figure out how to bottle it. Well that is why I am writing this post, it is something I figured out as I sat to write this. In fact the title in my notes what the secret to happiness, but I did not know what that secret was.

So how do we change from wanting attention to paying attention? If you know that secret let me know. Is the answer less social media? Is the answer no social media? I have found groups on a few of the social media sites so helpful (ADHD, Tesla, Technology, Workout) not sure could not use them. I wrote about having a friendly dictator that makes them tick, and most input is not looking for attention, but often looking for answers and others helping out.

Is the secret enjoying an experience and not craving the attention that comes from that experience? I was at a concert last week, snapped maybe 2 pictures but enjoyed one of the best shows. I take pictures daily on my commute and don’t post all of them. Not because some are not up to superb quality but I don’t need feedback from social media that way. I take the pictures for myself, share with relatively few people. I take hundreds of pictures of my dog and have a group chat with my kids where we sent hem.

Of all the examples I list above are situations where I am paying attention. Learning from groups on social media sites, enjoying the sunrise/sunset on my commute, writing this blog etc. are all examples of me not looking to be the center of attention but to pay attention. Now if I could only learn from what does make me happy, and figure out how to now pay attention better in other situations. I cannot guarantee I will but just writing this has let me find something if you asked me yesterday I didn’t understand about happiness.

his opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

Am I Becoming a Worse Driver…

Two years ago, I pampered myself and bought a Tesla Model 3. It was the first time in 12 years I got myself a car. I had bought 2 cars for the kids and 2 for my wife in that span. But mine was on last legs, so i got rid of it. I did not get Full Self Driving but it comes with Autopilot. This is like a super cruise control, and it does what cruise control does, as well as keeps the car in the lane, around curves etc.  

The first time I used it I was like wow; this does a really excellent job. Now there are some quirks, you need to keep your hands on the wheel, and sometimes (like on-ramps etc.) it struggles. But in stop and go traffic and on 440 on Staten Island it is the most wonderful thing. It takes the stress out of rush hour driving for sure. But then I started using it anytime I was driving on roads, it was easy. I started to think, though I am losing my driving skills.  

Then my mind started thinking about other things automated and will are those skills gone and or reduced. I mentioned that I work in technology and of course when you build applications part of the goal is to automate some manual tasks. The knowledge workers who did those tasks in spreadsheets or on paper now do not have to. When those workers leave and new people replace them there is a lack of knowledge of the original process, and if the system goes down, they might not be able to do it manually.  

For any task that somehow gets automated do we lose those skills and knowledge. For example, how many people know how to change their oil? How many people could navigate with a physical map? Develop and Print Photos from a film camera? Set the clock on a VCR? What is your best friend’s phone number? Can you calculate with a slide rule? Find a book in the library using the card catalog? These are all skills that I did years ago that well are no longer needed and no longer used. 

I have not ice skated in a year nor picked up a tennis racquet in longer. I played both sports a lot, to the point my muscle memory took over. I do know if I start (and try to get back on the ice) that it will kick in after a little while of rust. As the years go by the more rust there is, sitting at the piano things do not come as easy as it did when I play often. And things that I have not done for 10 or so years are going to struggle. The piano, skating and tennis may come back when my brain kicks in, but some mental things may not. 

Why do I mention this? Just like calculators have killed math, spreadsheet have killed the ledger I am wondering what the latest ‘AI’ (I put it in quotes cause its truly not AI) tools will kill off. What if people stopped writing meeting notes (expecting a tool to listen in and give notes) and it is missing some key point though it did not sound like one. What if all developers trained themselves on programming languages via a GPT? Would we lose developer creativity? Would everyone learn the same way, and it may not be the best way to code? What are the skills that the latest round of technology is going to replace and is it an improvement? 

This is not to scare anyone from using these tools. For coding I find it incredibly helpful to write test cases, remind me of an obscure library I used once every 4-5 years, and even ask to refactor to see alternatives to what I wrote. I do not use it yet for this blog, as it thinks with the crowd of wisdom (a blog post in draft) thus what it writes is average. I would rather point back to my previous assessment of the next digital divide but adding now a caveat. We need to keep our skills in certain areas, or we risk not being able to know if output of the AI is not missing something.  

In previous writings I have mentioned the classic statement perfection is the enemy of good. Is the output from any of these tools good enough? If you do not know the answer or have used these tools so often for tasks you lose the skill to even know, we have found a problem. If you are using it for knowledge for something you never did, it is different than if you know it for something that you used to do, and now leverage it. Let us assume everything you are asking is the latter. The more you use it (aka people writing using AI for the full writing when normally they used to write themselves) do they lose the skill of writing? If they are not reading it, correcting it, or rewriting it then the skills will deteriorate.  

I am and awful drawer, photoshoper (is that a word) or Microsoft Paint editor. I do love taking photos (those who know me see my pictures from the ferry) but I am not a good editor. Thus, asking a tool to edit or create an image for me I will use. But a skillset I know I need to use and want to continue to learn the tools can only be an assistant. In fact, as I am writing this, I am watching a class in Artificial Intelligence with Python to continue to build my knowledge. I know if I lose the skills, I could be unemployed.  

What skills will I lose? That is not the right question, the question should be what skill I should make sure I keep and work on so that I do not lose it. Which means even if complex calculations at work people should understand how to do manually, I need to sit at the piano more often, I need to work at friendship/relationships, I need to work at being a father, I need to work at communication, I need to work at my health and much more. I will use the tools at my disposal but ensure when I use them, I understand in which case I am doing so. And I challenge you to look at what skills you lost, what skills you need and make the right choices. As the subtitle of the blog states, it is getting better every day.  And probably being a good driver is one of them also.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

What Open Source has taught me about leadership.

A long time ago in my career I was at a different company that I was at now and linux was becoming the buzz. I had a boss tell me, with Linux we can pick a vendor for support, training, version, etc. vs. a single company. It was all about choice. And there became my introduction to open source. 

Being who I am, I overthink everything. When I heard the stories about open source is better for security because more people have eyes on it, that anyone can improve it, that it’s not limited to one company. The thoughts came up like anyone can put something bad in, and who is going to make sure the system goes awry? But what I was not thinking about then and see now is about leadership, and some of the best open-source projects have leadership. 

This should be part of my Team series, so I hope you all read that (see the top menu) but I did not think of it until a conversation with a good friend. What I learned from leadership comes down to a few key things, Empowerment, Flexibility, Communication, Recognition, Stealing and Drive to become what I sometimes call the friendly dictator. 

Empowerment: Open source is driven fully by this; no developer is given a ‘task’ to do (in theory). A developer can decide if there is a need, find an ask, pick it up, and start coding. If they produce the best solution (hopefully) their code will make a release. Kanban process of Agile tried to do the same, that is allows developers to pick the ‘next thing’ on the list themselves. Even Scrum wants developers to pick up tasks and not be assigned tasks. Now of course in companies break this a lot but done correctly you have freedom inside the box. As a manager by delegating authority and trusting the team to deliver you have empowered them. 

Flexibility: This is not being able to touch my toes without my knees bending, it is more about altering your ideas, schedule and even outcome. In open-source projects the leadership needs to often adjust on the fly but also allow ideas of features and functionality that they were not thinking or planning. Leadership does not always know what is right and understanding that, and with the power the team has needs your ability to be flexible is key. 

Communication: If you think about an open-source project, there are people all over the world (possibly) working for different companies, in school or not even working somehow must work towards a common goal. Try getting one other department in a large company to work with another, it is almost impossible. How are they able to do this? They have found ways to communicate. It is often documented and information on how to do things, where to put them etc. These open-source leaders set out how to communicate and the team would follow. I talk about how I lay out my expectations for the year to the team, as well as the pillar of communications, and this is from these leaders. 

Recognition: I did already state this in my Teams series but one of the best things you can do for someone on your team is ensure they are recognized, not just by you but by people outside your team for their work/effort. Open-source projects do this well, in fact early on there was this notion of credibility, where people were known for their input on Open-Source projects. Leaders should never take credit for individuals’ effort, and even more important team recognition is also key.  

Stealing: If you read my early on posts or worked for me/with me you have heard me say ‘Beg, Borrow, Steal then Build.’ But Steal is what open-source leaders are more looking to do. They steal ideas and features from commercial projects and other open-source projects. I know, when a company like Google or others is driving it they do produce original things, but many open-source projects are just versions of commercial software that already exists.  

Drive: How many times have you looked at an open-source project and the last update date was years ago? Or after a few years it slows down and dies? A post from the creator who says something like ‘I graduated school’ or ‘got a job’ so I am going to spend less time on this. For open-source projects to survive they need someone to drive it. None exists without the key person who keeps it going, even if it is just him during times when their projects are not as popular.  

These attributes (and a few others) create this friendly dictator. Why do I use such an awful term? There needs to be single buck stops here. Although the leaders can be flexible, to deliver the next version, to fix bugs, to stay competitive with commercial and other open-source software there needs to be this Top person. The most successful employ these key leadership skills and do it in this ‘friendly’ way that others are willing to get on board. The Open-Source leader makes people feel empowered, heard, recognized and the freedom to step in to help.  

Over the past few months, I saw this play out in a different area, in groups and communities. The most successful ones that I leverage (across a multitude of platforms) have these leaders who drive it. Some platforms call these moderators or admins. In groups that I am a part of you can see when the leadership works and does not. I of course get smart and either leave or ignore those groups. In groups that I retain the amount of knowledge I pick up is fantastic. I talk often about my Tesla groups, but other groups like finance, programming, writing, NJ Devils, pizza, wings, etc. all the best ones have leaders who have the same attributes.  

Just like Open-Source Software, what you will find is that these groups are driven by a few and used by many. That posts and info are not Top down from a leader, but the community learns the communication rules and standards. The admins will delete posts that are not welcome, remove users who are not following the rules and drive the conversation. I am surprised I did not recognize the link between groups and open-source projects sooner. It does boil down to the single point of great leadership. 

On a last point and going back to thinking about Bruce Lee and Jeet Kune Do, is to learn as much as you can from a variety of resources and take the best out of it. I try to keep my mind open as I see things around me and wonder what I can learn from it. I never thought I would be looking to learn leadership lessons from Open-Source software, but alas it was sitting there waiting for me to digest it. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

Finding Nemo, No Finding Forrester, no Finding Myself.

I started this as a blog in 2016, but most of the stories and posts go further back and were written in various notebooks. Though it may seem I am a writer if you asked any of my teachers in high school, I was not even a reader, let alone a writer. In parent teacher conferences they would say I was bright and underachieving. There are stories that my classmates tell (some of them are true) including the one about a classmate calling me at like 9-10pm at night reading me the physics problem, and my ability to tell him thru solving it, and at the same time i wrote the answer down. It saved me from carrying a heavy physics book home nightly. And some other stories about how I solved math problems in ways that were also not in the book.  

But now I look back at over 150 posts, and 30 plus more in draft state I wanted to know how far I came. Well, the first writings were poor, compared to my later works. The topics and my thoughts may be just as good, but the writing was awful. Why? I had to find my voice in writing, as and find myself. I thought about the books that I was able to read and what I liked about them. My ADHD makes it hard sometimes to absorb information and I find authors who write as they speak, in a conversational voice easier to read. I started looking at my writing as it has changed over the years, and the best ones are lessons or topics that are tied to my personal stories and spoken as a conversation to my reader.  

I honestly did not know I was looking for my voice. In fact, when I started writing some of these when I was in my twenties it was more about ego, that I knew better than you and my book and thoughts were going to change the world. Thank God I was not given the green light to write it. As I started writing, I found the why I write, and then I started to find my voice. Visiting and reading some of my posts, I can see the ones where I was on this tall tour lecturing, and others where I find myself humbled by lessons I learned and link to stories of my life.  

So how do you find yourself, and how do you find the why? It really is a series of trying things, some which may succeed and others that may fail. It is not chasing the vision of success, but more challenging yourself to succeed. It took me years to figure out my why, as stated I started writing more of ego. Later I found writing therapeutic and helped me with my day-to-day life. From dealing with how challenging work is, to struggles when I lost my wife the ability to have a creative outlet that was just for me seemed to keep myself grounded.  

Finding myself was harder. This blog is an insight into the journey. I remember when I was younger, I was told how bright I was, and what I was good at, but it is not what I wanted to be good at. I wanted to be a famous athlete or musician. What most people do not see is the work that those top 1% put in to get there. The hours of practice, the loss of other things (social life etc.) to gain it. And just like starting a company, there is no guarantee of success. For every Michael Jordan there are hundreds of thousands of players who did not make it. For every Billy Joel there are hundreds of thousands of Larry Golds who enjoy playing music but do not hit heights.  

While trying to be those and failing I was able to find the things I was good at. I was asked by someone how did I find Technology. I realized later in life that it was related to my ADHD. I was fortunate that my parents could afford get buy me a PC (in the early 80s) At that time you could not download software from the internet but there were magazines which printed source code and you could type it in. I found myself doing this often and getting excited when things worked. Then you would tinker a little to see what you could get it to do beyond what you typed. And little did I know these small shots of excitement were dopamine hits. This continued from building PCs, to getting crazy infrastructure to work till this day when I play with some AI stuff and get it to succeed. The excitement of building something is what got me to where I am. The connection between ADHD and what I do was a revelation.  

The managers who got the most out of me gave me short assignments, less than a day or so, because they seemed to understand how I worked. Other managers who tried to get me to do long term things did not work out as well. Even now for me to achieve things I break them into smaller tasks, often ones i can do in an hour or so and get that hit when done. Even cutting the lawn I break into two parts, cutting the front/back and later going out and doing the edging. This way I get to victories for what is really one task.  

What is only obvious in retrospect is all the things I failed at were things that I was not getting enough positive feedback, not seeing the instant results and thus I was not willing to put the effort needed to get the results I wanted. I see it in myself now from a song that I wanted to learn in guitar that the difficulty was so high I could not get past the first few bars and gave up. I keep telling myself to try again, and maybe I will learn it. I need to remind myself of the post from last week, that failure is not something that should hurt me, but should teach me.  

So now at the ripe old age of fifty-six I have found my voice, I have found myself and I try to work with the gifts I have to reach my goals. I will eventually learn that song, I will eventually write some fantastic post that is known outside my circle, I will go to sleep one night not thinking I have imposter syndrome but for now I get to smile as the last words of this post has given me another dopamine hit. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

If you succeeded in everything you do, you are lazy….

Last week I wrote about lessons from a goalie parent, but it was missed a few, and well this one was in draft for 2 years (writing another one about my draft problem) and figured hey this is a good time to finish this. When my daughter was first playing hockey competitively there was a notion you most wins or play on a winning team or in some cases play on the highest level of hockey in your age group. I will go into parents ruining youth sports another time, but inside the tornado of youth sports it is a bit crazy. The truth is at the youngest age you want to be on a team that wins equally as many as it loses (whatever level you are in.). The reason, if you are winning all the time, you are not being challenged, if you are losing all the time, you might get completely discouraged. 

Some of the greatest athletes of all time talk about their failures. Michael Jordan once said “I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” What do people remember? Most of us remember the shot of MJ hitting the shot with no time left on the clock. Not only did he fail many time at it, but I am sure (like thousands of other kids) played in their driveway/school yard etc. pretending to make that last shot. I know I did, and I missed the shot a lot, but the one time I hit it I celebrated like I won the NBA Championship. What I didn’t realize I was learning from the missed shots and worked on getting better. 

Bruce Lee (yeah quoting him again) said “Don’t fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.” I wish many times I followed this in my personal life. Simple in words and great in thought, like many other quote from Bruce (Note the 20th of July was the 50th anniversary of his death) show a simple philosophy that many struggle due to inertia to break thru. And the fear of failure and the reaction of others around us to that failure adds to the forces against taking risks. There are few who can escape the stigma, may fail more than the rest of us, but their successes may far outweigh someone who takes not chances. 

I once complained that in school that you could get an A for a failed experiment, as you proved something could not be done the way you thought. I was wrong, in life and in many work situations the notion of moving out of your comfort zone should be celebrated. In real life, whether it is work or your personal life there is a need to ignore the stigma of failing, look forward to the possibility of learning something even in failure. Those standing in the same spot may laugh at your attempts, but they will be in the same spot when you succeed and go past them.  

Now remember what I said about hockey, you need to have equal wins and losses. You can’t lose all the time in life and work. So, moving out of your comfort zone all the time is as bad as not moving out at all. Picking the time to take risks comes with experience and wisdom. Back to hockey, the goalie with the greatest number of wins in hockey also has the greatest number of losses. He had to go out and play with the risk of losing each time, but obviously 691 wins and victories were definitely lessons learned from those losses. In sports sometimes you can’t pick the risk you take, in life you can. Stick your neck out at work, take the new role that is out of your comfort zone, change careers, ask that person out you never met, say yes to something you would normally say no to… but do it with the experience gained from your earlier failures.  And don’t be so lazy, you might fail, but you might succeed.

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

Life lessons from a goalie parent..

My daughter played between the pipes from the Age of 4 thru just recently when her “playing career ended.” We use the expression she was a special kind of stupid as she played goalie not only for hockey, but for lacrosse. Apparently, she liked people shooting objects at a rapid velocity at her head and did not have the reflect to duck! How did it start, well she saw Martin Brodeur playing for the NJ Devils at the age of about 2, and from that day forward that is what she wanted to do.  

She did choose arguably the GOAT to be her idol, and such began a long journey. She was not going to have a shot for anything as her height estimate was going to be well short of 5′ and in both sports size matters. Martin Brodeur is 6″2, Darcy Kemper who won the Stanley Cup for Colorado in 2022 is 6″4, Aidan Hill who won for Vegas in 23 is 6’6″ and the 2022 Women’s Olympic Goalies all over 5’5.  

This is not going to be a long story about her from Mites -> Winning a Bronze Metal at Nationals (as a 15 year old for 19U) and committing to play lacrosse in college. This is more a piece about the biggest lesson along the way. One of the things about being a goalie is that you are the last line of defense, in hockey the puck goes thru 5 others to get to you. But if you are the Goalie – you are going to get the blame no matter what. It is your only job, to stop the puck (or ball.) 

You can see young goalies get upset, as well as the teammates sometimes blaming the goalie. As teams mature (kids get older) and in hockey, the more get together as a group and talk about what went wrong and who to pick up. In lacrosse (lax) you will see the goalie huddle with her defense and talk. It is interesting to see the maturity, but that is not the best lesson.  

Goalies still give up goals, and even in pro games you hear announcers say “that is going to haunt them.” Well, that is the lesson, it can’t. In Marty Brodeur’s autobiography he talks about what he calls the “next shot.” His only focused on stopping the next shot and mentions “you cannot stop the puck that is already behind you.” That simple wisdom is what goalies learn, they take a sip from their water bottle and refocus and getting the next one.  

And if you have not been following closely, the question is how does this relate to real life. It should be obvious.  

  • Stop blaming when things go wrong. Work the solution, only way to move forward (there is time for what is called retrospective later)  
  • Mistakes are going to happen, when someone calls you to admit one, the first thing is “do we have a plan to fix it” (notice the word We – there are hockey commercials that show that, there is no I, just we)  
  • In Agile, it is why we have retrospectives, we can review what went right/wrong/missing. If something goes wrong, it’s fine to identify it (Mark it as stop doing)  
  • Learn from what happened, don’t dwell on it.  
  • And you can’t just Learn, you need to work on correcting it. Perfection is a journey and, in some cases, won’t be hit.  
  • Build a culture where people are willing to bring mistakes and issues up, the sooner the better. 

As a goalie parent watching this allowed me to bring the same team building back to my office. The key is to build the culture. My daughters playing career may be over, but the lessons hopefully will stay with her. 

This opinion is mine, and mine only, my current or former employers have nothing to do with it. I do not write for any financial gain, I do not take advertising and any product company listed was not done for payment. But if you do like what I write you can donate to the charity I support (with my wife who passed away in 2017) Morgan Stanley’s Children’s Hospital or donate to your favorite charity. I pay to host my site out of my own pocket, my intention is to keep it free.  I do read all feedback, I mostly wont post any of them

This Blog is a labor of love, and was originally going to be a book.  With the advent of being able to publish yourself on the web I chose this path.  I will write many of these and not worry too much about grammar or spelling (I will try to come back later and fix it) but focus on content.  I apologize in advance for my ADD as often topics may flip.  I hope one day to turn this into a book and or a podcast, but for now it will remain a blog.   AI is not used in this writing other than using the web to find information.Images without notes are created using and AI tool that allows me to reuse them. 

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2023 LrAu

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑