Life

In November, I went down to Raleigh to meet my team for planning meetings and team building. For a few of my teammates, this is our first face to face interaction with each other ever. My boss wisely gave us a relatively simple assignment. Create a slide sharing what we’ve done this year and want to do next year (which I’ll share to an extent in a later post). Create another slide listing three things that make us who we are (born in a unique place, grew up on a farm, etc.) and three things we’re professionally known for. The assignment seemed simple enough, but it turned out to be way better than I thought it would be. It fostered a shared knowledge amongst the group about each other that I think others could benefit from using potentially. ...

A former co-worker and now friend used to have a tagline, “Everyday is a school day.” I remind myself of this fact nearly every time I learn something new. Overall, 2018 was great for me professionally. I’d like to share some things I picked up on this most recent journey around the sun we call 2018. I’ll make some predictions about 2019 in the process too. Kubernetes Will Get Easier Last year, I mentioned that Kubernetes Will Find Its Way in 2018. I do believe that came to fruition this year. Pretty much every major IT company has a range of ways to consume Kubernetes. They’re all Cloud Native Computing Foundation members at the very least. Operationalizing Kubernetes is getting easier as more people gain experience with Kubernetes. Even lab or cloud-only experience might be enough to get a job at the moment. ...

It’s the most wonderful time of year! When everyone gets together with family or friends they haven’t seen in who knows how long. Of course, the topic of Trump, social media, and burnt gravy stories will come up. But, my personal favorite topic is, “I have this issue with PIECE OF TECHNOLOGY XYZ. Please help me!” Luckily, despite having not worked on anything other than Mac and Linux the past seven years, I don’t get too many wild questions from family. I’ll sit down with Grandma and help her with an iPhone issue from time to time. My mother-in-law has some legacy e-mail stuff all filtered in her Gmail. Sometimes AT&T changes something and it breaks. These things happen. Complex systems are hard enough. No sense in me being an asshole about it (although I will get frustrated from time to time). ...

Since Sunday afternoon, I’ve been in a whirlwind of meetings, discussions, and calls about IBM’s plan to acquire Red Hat for $34 billion. My mind has been racing but, after some consideration, I’ve decided to share my thoughts as a narrative timeline. Trust me when say that I have given this format considerable thought. It is likely the safest way (regulatory-wise) to deliver my thoughts on the topic. I would like to point out that I have updated my disclaimer and this site’s terms. My views do not reflect those of my employer or entities I’m affiliated with. Names are withheld for obvious reasons. ...

I have mentioned this a few times in various talks, on social media, and in my newsletter; the importance of psychological safety in creating effective teams is often overlooked. Google did an enormous amount of research to determine, “the secrets of effective teams at Google.” Code-named Project Aristotle, Google wanted to nail down, once and for all, what factors contributed to team effectiveness. The number one contributor to team effectiveness at Google was surprising at the time; psychological safety. “Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk.” This is a mind bending idea but, it has real impact on a team’s ability to perform and innovate. Let’s analyze an example in my own work life of creating this psychological safety. ...