Wayne Haber

I have always admired the power and effectiveness of TED talks.  This book was a quick read and helped to reinforce the best practices that the most successful TED presenters employ. My notes and key excerpts are below.   Unleash the master within Dig deep to identify your unique and meaningful connection to your presentation topic. “Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson Master the art of storytelling You need data, facts, and analysis to challenge people, but you also need narrative to get people comfortable enough to care about the community that you are advocating for. Your audience needs to be willing to go with you on a journey.” Aristotle believed that persuasion occurs when three components are represented: ethos, logos, and pathos. Ethos is credibility. We tend to agree with people whom we respect for their achievements, title, experience, etc. Logos is the means of persuasion through logic, data, and statistics. Pathos is th...

Hyrum’s Law: with a sufficient number of users of an API, it does not matter what you promise in the contract: all observable behaviors of your system will be depended on by somebody. I really enjoyed and learned a lot from this book.  I noted that, as is the case with many O'Reilly books about best practices at Google, different people will find various chapters more/less interesting and pertinent to them. Below are the excerpts that I found most pertinent.   Leadership Contrary to some people’s instincts, leaders who admit mistakes are more respected, not less. If you perform root-cause analysis on almost any social conflict, you can ultimately trace it back to a lack of humility, respect, and/or trust. Your organization needs a culture of learning, which requires creating psychological safety that permits people to admit to a lack of knowledge. If you try to achieve an impossible goal, there’s a good chance you’ll fail, but if you fail to try to achieve the impossible, you’...

Radical Candor : Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Much of it was a review for me; however, it contained many great pointers and spawned several ideas. Here are some of my notes and key excerpts: My summary of Radical Candor is that it is primarily about having a balanced approach to giving feedback. Feedback should be compassionate (because you genuinely care about the person) while also challenging the person directly and respectfully.     When giving feedback, it is common knowledge that it is crucial to describe the situation, behavior, and feedback. It is not as well known that the same aspects are essential when giving praise. It is important to remember that during 1:1's, the agenda should be (primarily) your direct report's agenda, not yours. Don't make an offer if you're not dying to hire someone. Listen with the intent to understand, not to reply. Rick Hanson: "The brain is like Velcro for negativ...

Selected excerpts from https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/readmes/wayne-haber/   I’m a veteran of three successful startups and have experience in multiple areas including healthcare, finance, and security. I subscribe to servant-leadership Learning is very important to me. I read approximately one book a week and take one Udemy class a month. I subscribe to the philosophy of “saying what you are going to do and doing what you say”. I am an advocate of remote-work due to it being highly effective (on many levels) for both the company and for the individual. At work, nothing makes me happier than when: A user benefits from a change developed by my team A prospect becomes a customer because of a feature developed by my team A team member learns something new and expands their horizons A process or procedure or technology is improved that benefits the overall company, team members, or the technology industry as a whole I use this 1-1 format I do skip-level meetings wi...

    https://www.nirandfar.com/Indistractable/ I quite enjoyed “Indistractable” by Nir Eyal.  It was an insightful analysis on determining and spending time on what is important, theories around how to do so, and practical tips on how to accomplish your goals. Favorite quote Most people don’t want to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that distraction is always an unhealthy escape from reality. How we deal with uncomfortable internal triggers determines whether we pursue healthful acts of traction or self-defeating distractions.   Quick summary It is essential not only to focus on the right things but also to determine triggers and take actions to stop doing the wrong things.  Often doing the wrong things is driven by the need to lower discomfort rather than intentionally choosing them.  It can also significantly help to label yourself as having and being able to have a high amount of self-control (avoiding the self-fulfilling prophecy).  Our time is o...

Find out what happens when an engineer attends all of the CEO's meetings for two weeks at the largest fully remote and transparent company in the world . CEO shadow program impressions and takeaways What I did during the program Why someone should apply to be in the program What I learned about Gitlab values in action and effective communication Blog https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/07/08/ceo-shadow-impressions-takeaways/ Video

“Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld had never written a sitcom, and my department had never developed one,” Ludwin recalls. “We were a good match because we didn’t know what rules we weren’t supposed to break.” I recently finished “ Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World ” by Adam Grant and found it to be quite inspiring. Here are the themes for my biggest takeaways: Don’t accept defaults.  Take the initiative to seek out options that could be better. Strive to achieve security in your life so that you can be free to be original in other areas. Generate many ideas, get feedback on them (especially from peers), and don’t let your personal confirmation bias be a pitfall when evaluating them. When evaluating the ideas of others, before doing so, generate your own ideas immediately beforehand.