Notes for August 4th 2023
- I noted last week a general collective anxiety around the company I work at as restructuring goes on. All of it is for the common good and for the best. But it still means folks are absolutely freaked out about being laid off because their role isn't quite needed given the place the business is in right now. My fear, as noted previously, is that good people who should be kept on opt out and leave because of that anxiety.
- I should point out that I am at-risk as much as anyone else. But I believe in the vision of the company, think the product is amazing and love interacting with my colleagues, our customers and partners. I'd happily keep this up for a number of years!
- I've switched my default browser from Arc back to Firefox. Arc is wonderful, and absolute dream to use. But the mobile app seems like a bit of an experiment. And I just can't shake the feeling that Arc, and most other Chromium-based browsers, is going to be compromised by Google's need to show more ads on the internet.
- 'X' updated it's tagline to "Blaze your glory." Which is hilarious. It's like a tagline for an app built by 16 year olds for their fellow Call of Duty players.
- There seems to be a bit of a tug of war around remote vs hybrid vs in-office. I think there's nuance here. If you're a startup or small company, I think you need to be in the room together. Similarly if you're new to a company, regardless of your title/status, you need to be in the room together. If you're breaking new ground in a team/company/project, be in the room together. If it's Monday and you've got some customer meetings, by all means be at home.
- My point is that being in the room makes an order-of-magnitude difference to your ability to be part of a team, project or company. People seem to think it's some grim dystopian tech bro founder dreamland to control the population. I assure you, I am not a billionaire tech bro dystopian figure looking to control the population below me. Though I am open to offers for such a role. But, having done the full remote thing, hybrid works much better. I go to the office 3 days per week on average, and since doing that have had a huge impact both on my own ability to impact other people's work, elevate my "brand" (as in, "hey, that guy knows things that could be useful") and feel part of the company culture.
- I've been complaining about heat and rain a lot lately. Because it's been warm and raining a lot. But talking to a colleague in Dallas where it's 42-degrees on a day that he had to go to an outdoor concert really shut me up.
- I realised why a lot of my colleagues have Whoop fitness trackers. It's because they're free on our internal work portal, which allows us to expense things for fitness/health/etc. So I've naturally ordered one, and am excited to continue not being fit in any way, but knowing the facts behind my lack of fitness.