I think these are valuable tools and if your CV doesn’t have one, then I think you should strongly consider changing that.
They’re your “elevator pitch” in text form. They’re your space to say “hey, this is me, this is why you want to work with me” - freeform text saying whatever you choose. Take the space, use the opportunity, and pitch.
They add colour and context. The bulk of most CVs is facts - positions, skills, experience. Your hero paragraph is an opportunity to tie that all together in a neat package for the reader - are you a “freelancer and consultant with a focus on algorithmically-complex backend systems”, or an “infrastructure engineer with significant experience in FinTech and other regulated environments” or something else entirely? Say so!
They put the most important information first. Get your message across clearly and concisely and early, and let the rest of your CV follow up with more detail. Hiring managers and other readers can be busy, they can miss things, they can be juggling tonnes of CVs at once - make their lives easier by giving them the key things up front.
They let you shape the narrative. You can’t change your past, but you can choose how you present it. Maybe you had a few recent short stints in places and you’re concerned about being seen as flighty - well you also have “experience across a range of organisations”. Maybe your heart is in hands-on software engineering but you spent the last two years as a manager to see if you liked it - you’re “an experienced software engineer with management experience” so when someone starts reading about your previous roles they don’t think you’ve applied for the wrong thing when they see the most recent.
So if your CV doesn’t have a hero paragraph, I think it’s well worth the time to change that. Spend a few minutes on a sentence or two to really make clear who you are and why you’re awesome.
]]>As such, the following analogy occurred to me, and now I inflict it upon you:
Fundamentally incidents are a fact of life for an engineering org, and dirty nappies a fact of life for the parents of a small child. It’s how you deal with them that counts!
]]>All categorisations are approximate at best and will probably cause some kind of contention.
All categorisations are approximate at best and will probably cause some kind of contention.
I still wasn’t travelling much in 2021, which disrupted when/how I usually read, and this left me in a bit of a reading funk. But despite the delay I figured I’d catch up, and I definitely enjoyed looking back!
All categorisations are approximate at best and will probably cause some kind of contention.
At best it feels naïve, at worst downright harmful - this notion that there is a singular “root cause” that we can just dig down to, and if we find that, then we’ve cracked it.
Incidents, even the simplest, tend to come from a complex web of context and considerations.
There may be a singular triggering event - the one thing that made it all come crashing down - but to call that a “root cause”, like the thinking stops there, is to ignore all the many potential contributing factors, big or small, that made it such a problem.
Consider a hypothetical warehouse fire. Maybe the triggering event was a discarded cigarette by the back door. But maybe a great many factors contributed to that ending up as a raging inferno rather than just some minor littering:
Yes, look hard at that discarded cigarette - without it you might not be looking at a financial and logistical nightmare. But to call it a “root cause”, like it all stops there, like the whole situation doesn’t emerge from a complex web of factors, some situational but some systematic, some within your control but some totally beyond - that feels like unhelpfully short-sighted thinking.
Incidents are learning opportunities. If you stop your exploration at some “root cause”, you risk throwing away lots of potential value. Inevitably there will be opportunities to improve across the board. They might not always be worth actively doing anything about, but they are still usually worth recording.
Stop looking for a “root cause”, start looking at:
I generally find that the Triggering Event is, though worth noting, often the least interesting part. A component failed, a mistake was made, whatever. Components fail, people make mistakes - and a healthy system should cope. But you’re probably doing this exercise because it didn’t. It’s worth knowing that a discarded cigarette started the fire, but could you have necessarily done much about it, and could any one of a number of similar things led to the same outcome?
The Contributing Factors are where I find all the really interesting things turn up. There’s often a point of diminishing returns, but sometimes even small-seeming things can be valuable to think about. Maybe the fire was made worse by flammable material being temporarily stored nearby as a result of lack of space due to recent growth - in isolation seemingly simple misfortune, but potentially part of a pattern of issues forcing a rethink of the growth strategy, or at least a cost worth considering.
You may look at a Contributing Factor and decide it’s not a priority to address, and that’s fine! But it’s still valuable to record it, and consider mitigations and/or improvements.
I’m sure the spec authors are smart and reasonable upstanding people who believe they are making the world a better place but with all due respect USB-C can absolutely get in the sea. Or at least I wish some very stubbed toes upon people.
There was a brief shining period in my life when USB felt good. I felt like I understood it, I felt like I could trust it. It was simple.
There was a version number, that basically meant “speed”: 1 was “slow as heck”, 2 was “decent” and 3 was “turbo”. There was a letter for the connector: A was for hosts and basically came in maxi only (if you’ve ever seen mini or micro A in real life please let me know), and B was for devices and came in maxi/mini/micro and was really the only end worth mentioning. And that was basically it? And things just worked? And sure, there were quirks like you’d need to try three times to plug something in, but you knew where you stood. Things were simple but effective - if you could plug it in, 999 times out of 1000 things would Just Work.
And then along comes USB-C, which isn’t so much a standard as 14159265 different standards and options all stood on one another’s shoulders under a big-ass trenchcoat. Does C refer to the standard or the connector or something else? I sure don’t know. (Edit: I’m wrong, USB-C refers to the connector, it’s probably more accurate to say my frustrations are with some new version of the USB standard, but I still don’t fully understand what and which, and I’m not alone here!)
Sure, there’s only one connector type now, and orientation doesn’t matter (mechanically at least; I’ll get to that nuance later). But other than that, my life as a user has gotten materially more frustrating.
Because now everything is Smart, or needs to be. You can put Ethernet down it or HDMI down it, except maybe you can’t if one of the devices at the other end or the cable itself disagrees. How do you know if the cable will work? Good bloody question. Devices might negotiate power except they might not and maybe you’ll plug something in to charge and it just won’t and haha sucks to be you. (Edit: In 2021 there were apparently 8 kinds of USB-C to USB-C cable, all visually indistinct)
And the plugs have computers. And I sometimes feel like I have enough computers in my life already without my cables being two computers too. Because now my plugs can be running different versions of firmware, or maybe they’re running something malicious and haha as if I’ve got any chance of figuring that out. (Edit: See whitequark on this and many other bits of USB bonkers up- and down-thread)
There was a time when “my cable has a tiny computer in it” was how you identified the Bad USB Cables because it meant someone was doing Naughty Things and you could smash the cable and be free. But now your cables don’t do the right things if the tiny computers disagree and haha good luck.
And has anyone developed a standard for clearly identifying or labelling what a cable might decide to do? Have they bollocks. (Edit: There is now a proposal, but good luck figuring out what you actually have)
So now I have half a face of stubble because my beard trimmer “charges with USB-C” except I have a USB-C charger here and when I plug it in then precisely nothing happens, which I can only assume is because the charger is expecting it to negotiate power and the beard trimmer is negotiating precisely sod all because it’s a beard trimmer and consists of a battery and a motor and a blade.
I’m going to go wax my face or something.
Update: Adafruit have a (genuinely) helpful guide about USB-C cable types and differences. However it includes this gem:
Always double check a cable’s capabilities before using to power laptops or monitors
I appreciate that the message is effectively a disclaimer, and made with good intent. However it feels akin to being told to write a distributed map reduce function in Erlang in order to query a database - not entirely the most practical of advice…
I think it’s fair to say I’m somewhat technically competent, like, I own USB debug hardware and I even have a rough idea of how to use it. But I have no idea how to “check a USB-C cable’s capabilities” beyond offering up a prayer to Benson. I imagine the average layperson doesn’t even realise different cables exist…!
Update: In attempting to learn which version of USB to hold responsible, I turned to the Wikipedia article on USB-C whereupon I learned that:
A device with a Type-C connector does not necessarily implement any USB transfer protocol, USB Power Delivery, or any of the Alternate Modes: the Type-C connector is common to several technologies while mandating only a few of them.
Good luck.
]]>What attracted you to the role with us?
Plus the absolutely vital follow-up:
(“I want a new job and yours didn’t sound completely awful” is an entirely reasonable answer!)
That second part is key.
On its own, the question risks seeming like an uninteresting request for praise - “tell us how awesome we are!”— as The Oatmeal has so graphically illustrated in “The Six Crappiest Interview Questions”.
But it’s a question that can have significant value, especially when asked early on.
Sometimes there’s a huge expectation mismatch - whatever the candidate is looking for is not something they’re going to get from us - and the sooner that’s discovered and discussed, the better for everyone.
Sometimes (though rarely) people can actually “fail” the question. I am absolutely 100% open to hiring people who, at this stage, have nothing more than “this kinda looks interesting, let’s talk more” - it’s a two-way process after all - but if someone’s only response is to pour abuse on their current co-workers and workplace, then perhaps they don’t have the perspective and the thoughtfulness that I’m looking for.
Even if I don’t get much useful information about the candidate, I get feedback on our advert and how we’re perceived.
Finally, there’s a signalling aspect with the flippant second half. I try to run an inclusive thoughtful hiring process that reflects what we actually value. I don’t want people standing on ceremony, I don’t want arbitrary hoop jumping. The more open and honest I can encourage candidates to be, the better.
Try it, see what responses you get!
]]>But I’ve found so much joy through reading - and even though today for various reasons I don’t read as much as I used to, it’s still one of the best ways for me to pick up information.
I read quickly (e.g. Lord of the Rings in about a week at around 10 years old). This is almost certainly a huge factor in my enjoyment. I don’t know how exactly I do this or where learned this; I think I taught myself at a fairly young age. But an indirect benefit, other than the obvious speed itself, is that it makes it very low cost to try out a book/series - it doesn’t take me much time or effort to get through enough to decide if I want to continue!
When it comes to books, I want Kindle for fiction, paper for non-fiction.
I consume fiction linearly. My Kindle is great for reading linearly. (Books like The Silmarillion, where I need to constantly flick back and forth to the character list to understand who someone is and which of their twelve names they might be using, do not spark joy)
My Kindle lets me carry a whole bunch of books for very little space and very little weight. The battery life is great, and the next book is just a download away - no need to try to decide if it’s worth lugging an additional paperback around in case I finish the one I’m on.
Non-fiction, I want a more interactive experience. I want to bookmark pages to quickly flick to, I want to flip between sections, I want to highlight, annotate, and more. These are all possible with the Kindle, but far easier with actual paper.
Audiobooks don’t work for me at all. They sound like a wonderful experience for so many other people, I’m a little jealous, but they’re not for me. I probably have some mild auditory processing challenges that are a factor here. (But people who look down on audiobooks with the claim “you’ve not really read the book” can get in the sea with their gatekeeping)
Articles, blog posts etc., usually on my phone or desktop. I was a happy Google Reader customer until they killed it, now I’m a happy Feedbin customer. That said, I hit feed burnout a few years ago and haven’t quite gotten over it, so mostly I get links from friends and newsletters and social media.
I’m continually frustrated with the modern trend of sharing things only through video. I appreciate there’s lots of incentives for people to do so - improved reach, harder to copy, popularity etc. - but personally I hate it. Fortunately, it seems like AI is getting to the point where it’s cheap and easy for me to make a transcript and just read that. Unfortunately sometimes that isn’t enough, and while I completely understand e.g. Minecraft builders using video to share details of their creations, gosh I wish they’d publish more schematics…!
My favourite time and place to read has been while travelling.
As a child, holidays would often involve a fair amount of time in the back of a car. As an only child, books were an excellent source of entertainment, and unlike my GameBoy, they wouldn’t run out of battery!
As an adult commuting into London or flying to Germany for work, the silver lining was the fantastic chunk of time for reading.
But between the pandemic causing me to travel a lot less, and parenthood meaning I’m often driving when I do, I’m reading substantially less.
I’m not advocating for anything here - this is what works for me, you do you.
But if you want me to take information onboard, the best way is to write it down!
]]>So I’ve set up a GitHub template repository at https://github.com/doismellburning/python-template/
Features include:
You almost certainly don’t want to use this yourself - it’s highly opinionated and tailored to me. But it may be an interesting reference - it’s already been a useful place to grab bits from for other ongoing projects I have!
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