I almost got fired once. My friend, and CTO at the time, Dustin Moskovitz pulled me into a room onemorning. He told me I would no longer be working on News Feed, which wassurprising because at the tim
The Department of Labor’s increasingly heated dispute with Google over a gender pay gap began, innocently enough, with a routine audit. As a federal contractor, Google must comply with the US governme
Notice board at Ericsson, Stockholm (pic by DeirdreS ) Many of us have worked with them: the engineering jerk who is brilliant at what they do, but treats others like trash. Some companies have a poli
Why Agile Isn’t Working and What We Do Differently UPDATE: We’ve written an entire book on this topic! Read it online: Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work That Matters . Agile started off
I’ve written about the gender pay gap before and every time I do I get people who respond by insisting that there is perfect equality in the workplace and any imbalances that exist must be because wom
5 min read · Nov 21, 2017 -- A phrase I’ve heard quite a bit lately when discussing roles on a product engineering team, or whether a given engineer should be on a team at all, is “well, surely someon
One of the underlying truths of the wave of #MeToo stories is that when human beings are reduced to sex objects—whether they’re directly preyed upon or merely undermined—it doesn’t just cause them per
In the spirit of Adam Wiggins’ inspiring list of Herokuvalues which was published when he left the company that heco-founded, I wanted to publish a list of my own now that I’ve transitionedaway. My ti
One of the areas I often see senior engineers struggle with, is raising junior engineers to the next level. Often this is because we don’t give them the space to explore, learn and understand how to a
O ne day last summer, around noon, I called Athena, a 13-year-old who lives in Houston, Texas. She answered her phone—she’s had an iPhone since she was 11—sounding as if she’d just woken up. We chatte
Published in Startups & Venture Capital · 9 min read · Oct 16, 2017 -- I recently read a story here titled “ We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made. ” Lets have a seat, you and I. We need
by Jonathan Solórzano-Hamilton “You will never be able to understand any of what I’ve created. I am Albert F***ing Einstein and you are all monkeys scrabbling in the dirt.” And so our resident genius,
I was at a dinner with eight highly successful professional women recently, ranging in age from 35 to 74. Their stories were typical of research I have been conducting on dual-career couples. One had
In 2014, Monroe was a trafficking victim in California. She found her clients by advertising on SFRedbook, the free online erotic services website. One day, she logged into the site and discovered tha
A couple of days ago, I had the opportunity to assess prospective new people managers, or Talent Leads, as they are called at trivago. There were 24 candidates in total, and I got to interact with eig
Gender equality remains frustratingly elusive. Women are underrepresented in the C-suite , receive lower salaries , and are less likely to receive a critical first promotion to manager than men . Nume
Your coworker asks you a slightly unclear question. How do you answer? I think asking questionsis a skill (see How to ask good questions ) and that answering questionsin a helpful way is also a skill!
Rebecca Garcia was 12 years old when she bought her first domain name. She asked her dad for his credit card to purchase the address. He didn’t think she knew how to actually buy a site. “When my parents saw the credit card bill and it had, like, XoAriesGirloX or something, they called the company…
#Antifa and #Berkeley were hot topics last weekend in America — and in Russia Published in Arc Digital · 13 min read · Sep 1, 2017 -- Social media has an important role in shaping perceptions of curre
When we asked Fidji Simo what she wanted to share with our readers, she polled her team at Facebook to see what they would highlight as her core competency. What attribute or habit has prompted her ro
In the past week, Dr. Jennifer Conti has seen two patients who would be perfectly screwed if House Republicans had their way. One, Conti told Vogue, was lied to at a crisis pregnancy center posing as
All my models start messy. Yet, I find that my messy models are actually quite useful. It forces me to acknowledge my ignorance. The longer I feign ignorance, the longer it takes for the mess to surfa
Writing declarative, readable and flexible React components using render props instead of HOCs Published in tandemly · 7 min read · Oct 3, 2017 -- Yes, I’m breaking up with higher order components in
J ustin Rosenstein had tweaked his laptop’s operating system to block Reddit, banned himself from Snapchat, which he compares to heroin, and imposed limits on his use of Facebook . But even that wasn’
Facebook’s News Feed. LinkedIn’s 'Who’s Been Viewing Your Profile' feature. And now Twitter’s move toward 280 characters per tweet. Before these features saw the light of day, there were long debates.
The past five posts explored what it means to be a team, the five levels of teamwork, how to build performance, the four major team player types, and the four stages of team development. It’s important that leaders set the proper context–the atmosphere–for teamwork. Remember, team work is not an end…
Process is what I ship 🚢 This situation was the result of a process failure, and given that process is what I ship as the VP of Engineering, I was also responsible for improving the process so the tea
Las Vegas police stand guard along the streets outside the Route 91 Harvest Country music festival grounds on Sunday. David Becker/Getty Images Implicit in all political coverage by the media is the b
Last night, the United States experienced the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. At least 58 people are dead and over 500 more wounded. No, that’s not a typo: More than 500 people wer
T here were six hours during the night of April 10, 2014, when the entire population of Washington State had no 911 service. People who called for help got a busy signal. One Seattle woman dialed 911
Evacuees wade down a flooded section of Interstate 610 as floodwaters from Tropical Storm Harvey rise in Houston on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2017. Photo: David J. Phillip/AP Now is exactly the time to talk ab
MITCH MCCONNELL was visibly distraught after the Republicans’ “skinny repeal” of Obamacare was defeated in the Senate, but he was not too out of sorts to get in a dig at Europe. The majority leader wo
When employees don’t trust managers to make good decisions or to behave with integrity, their motivation is seriously compromised. Their distrust and its attendant lack of engagement is a huge, unreco
At The New York Times we have a number of different systems that are used for producing content. We have several Content Management Systems, and we use third-party data and wire stories. Furthermore,
Read the updated post, Art of the OKR Redux instead! A lot has changed since 2014…. Original “Art of the OKR” below, for archival purposes: I wrote a book on using OKRs called Radical Focus: Achieving
It’s one of the biggest pieces that will make or break us as we try to become a great company, and I only recently realized it. We’ve been back and forth a number of times about the topic of feedback,
Bethanye McKinney Blount has a very particular set of skills, skills that she’s acquired over a very long career. But unlike Taken ’s Bryan Mills , her ability as a “fixer” extends to corralling troub
The origins of Luna Asana product vision When developing the initial Asana application, cofounders Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein imagined a web app that was as easy to use as paper. The early
AMPersand. Posted on 31 August 2017 If you’ve spent any time looking into Google’s “ Accelerated Mobile Pages ” ( AMP ) project , I’m sure you’ll agree: it’s wonderful to hear the AMP team talk about