It is often not possible to get all three
1. job satisfaction and meaning
2. money
3. lifestyle
Most jobs can give you 2 out of 3. You may have to adopt a side hustle to fullfil the missing piece.
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I am a cat person. My personality matches a cat. I like people watching and lazying in the sun. I move slowly, only pouncing when there is something that intensely interests me. I have a deep-seated fear of dogs biting me randomly.
I also raised a cat person and now she is 18!
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It’s an odd time to tell someone else to meet. Why not 5:30 or 5:35?
It is a lot more precise and shows that I have planned it out. I mean what I say.
It’s odd, I know.
But it’s precise, exact and intended.
Let’s meet at 5:37. See you in 9 minutes. Could you meet in 4 minutes?
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Getting There
The Merced Branch of the San Francisco Public Library system is 1/2 block from the 28, K buses. Right acrossed from the Stonestown mall. There is plenty of street parking with 2 car parking for 10 minutes.
What is different?
One standout of this library is the central garden space with maple trees and 5 benches. On this sunny Saturday, taking a book outside to read without checking out the book is a great way to spend 2-3 hours browsing and reading books. There is 1 aisle worth of Chinese fiction and non-frictions books.
Interior
There is a nice fireplace with 6 comfy leather seats. A lot of 4 top tables spread a crossed the library. It’s a single floor library with almost 1/3 of the space devoted to childrens area and a small teen section.
Noise
A lot of kids, so expect noise around level 5 out of 10.
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(The photo was posted in the Chinese section of the SF Public Library near Stonestown shopping mall, written in simplified Chinese. It takes a lot of effort for me to read in the simple form. It basically says that it’s up to us as individuals to learn and thrive in a democratic society. There are some basic rules that we need to behave in the library, contact the librarian for the specific rules)
I have learned a lot from the book Skin In The Game (page 63-65).
Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.
The author believes that stock analyst should own the stocks they talk about (long or short). Otherwise “journalists will imitate, to be safe, the opinion of other journalists, thus creating monoculture and collective mirages”
He also talks about how doctors have skin in the game, but they don’t have the right skin in the game. They will either over prescribe medicine for mild illness, just to be safe (not be sued) or use the wrong treatment (if the wrong metric is used (Page 64)
The legal system and regulatory measures are likely to put the skin of the doctor in the wrong game.
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In the book Skin In The Game, the author (pg. 61) stated a saying by the brothers Geoff and Vince Graham:
I am, at the Fed level, libertarian;
at the state level, Republican
at the local level, Democrat;
and at the family and friends level, a socialist.
The author’s argument is that we cannot apply the self-interest universally. We have to scope down to our clan. I don’t fully grasp the concept yet, but I agree with the argument.
Sympathy for all would be tyranny for thee, my good neighbor.
And finally
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, neve the reverse.
Oh one more
Laws come and go; ethics stay;
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In 2019, I wanted try something a bit different than 2018.
In 2018, I didn’t buy anything that was not a consumable.
In 2019, I wanted to be less extreme and only buy non consumables once every quarter.
In Q1 2019 – I have bought 2 pairs of shoes and that is it.
Something else I am changing, is to not spend money I don’t have. Going to all cash or ATM card. Hopefully this drives the right spending habits since I will both valued more what I paid for in cash and I don’t feel overwhelmed by a large Visa bill at the end of the month. -
I remember my mom tried to teach me this when I was young.
Put things back in it’s place. Of course she said it in Chinese.
She was not very successful in teaching me. I was not a great listener when I was young.
I am still struggling with this at home, everything back in it’s place.
Whenever I get into the mode in tidying up my physical space, I hear my mom’s voice in my head. She never lectured at me to do it, just patiently told me that it is the simplest way to clean as you go.
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Take a company like Facebook. They leave millions of passwords in plain text, they created the news feed where dictators use the various Facebook products (Instagram, FB, Whatsapp) to spread fake propaganda, they violate our privacy repeatedly (even those of us who don’t use it, but are connected to people who do) and hijack our attention.
What would turn them around when their very business model is based on driving engagement, taking attention and stealing time?
In the book Skin In The Game – Nassim Nicholas Taleb, argues that in most cases taking a company like Facebook to court and punishing them or the threat of a massive law suite is the best route to have Facebook change their behavior. Hence it makes sense that FB founder MZ asked congress to regulate them. Once they are regulated, FB knows how to play the game of paying for lobbyist and contributing to political campaigns to get around or stay at the edge of regulation.
He argues in the book that “If you harm me, I can sue you” has worked really well in cases of pollution for example.
While many of us might have immediate negative reactions to law suites, forcing FB and it’s employees to have skin in the game, ultimately gives them a framework and the right incentives to do the right thing.
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Target audience:
Female engineers at the 2, 3, 4 levels
Purpose
Introduce them to engineers, at least 2 levels beyond, who can help them with
- Expanding their technical breath, depth and quality.
- Review their work and help them think about ways to increase their impact.
- Improve their problem solving skills.
- Expose them to opportunities they normally would never get
- Help them to be long term successful at Splunk and their future careers
Expectations
The mentees should initiate most of the meetings and topic proposals that they are willing to talk about and work on.
Meetings should be regular (60 minutes a week) to start, until the 6th week.
Managers for mentee and mentor should be informed and help support the effort.
Mentors try to honor the 1:1 meetings time and postpone only if absolutely necessary.
Logistics
Any side should disengage and politely thank the other side, if the match does not work out. Reach out to folks running the program for help in disengaging.
All conversation topics are confidential unless explicitly given permission to share.
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(follow up to part 2 of tech mentorship)
What does a success mentorship look like?
- Both mentor and mentee are getting something out of the experience.
- They meet regularly, or the mentee feels free to reach out when they have issues/questions to work out.
- They hold themselves accountable to each other, if their are action items and follow ups.
- The mentee is learning and growing in the mentorship and/or are introduced to others who are helping them.
What does failure look like?
- Both or either side really does not want to meet anymore, there is no real flow of information, exchange of ideas or value from the meetings.
- Meetings are cancelled regularly by either side.
- There is very little or no followup from action items on either side.
- One or both sides agree there should be a re-match of the mentorship.
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Continue from Part 1 https://tonytam.org/2019/04/07/proposal-for-technical-mentorship-draft-1/
Target audience : P2, P3, P4
Guidelines for matching : 2 levels separation
Why be a mentee ? Ask question of someone who have been where you are at, give you a perspective that you normally don’t see, spend time with you to help you grow technically in a safe space. This person is not in your direct chain of command so there is less at stake.
Why be a mentor? It’s what we expect of our senior leaders. Part of expanding your impact in our organization. Giving you another fresh perspective that you might not be exposed to? You can learn to communicate better, again, by having exposure to different perspectives.
Roles
- Technical Mentor
- Mentor for career growth
- Coach
- Advocate
What role do managers play?
- Manager usually should not be the person’s mentor, but in certain situations, they can be. There could be multiple levels of conflict of interest.
- Manages should certainly be coaches, advocates, but again there is some levels of conflicts of interest.
How do we know if things are going well or not? Is the match working out or not for both sides?
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The goal of this proposal is to define how we build a culture of career growth for our technical staff in any individual contributor level.
During the career of a software engineers, several key factors contributes to their career growth
- Innate skills and self motivation
- The type of projects they are exposed to and have access to contribute to.
- Their immediate supervisor and manager
- Their immediate team members
- Senior staff in their immediate team
- Senior staff outside of their immediate team
- Senior management in their direct chain of command
- Senior management outside of their direct chain of command
To be continued in part 2 https://tonytam.org/2019/04/08/proposal-for-tech-mentorship-v2/
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One my favorite movie scenes is when Sydney P., in the movie”Guess who is coming to dinner?” said to his father, something like “It’s your job to raise me, you brought me into this world”. “When it’s my time, I will do the same for my children”.
There is no need for children to thank their parents. If they choose to, that’s great. But, I don’t think they really understand how much parents give up until the children turn 30 or when they have their own children.
The children will realize that
- For 18 years, the children are truly the *most* important priority that drives where the parents chose to live in order for the best possible safety, community, schools.
- Parents make decision on the type of jobs they take in order to spend enough time with their children.
- They even make sacrifices to give up their careers for 10+ years in order to just be present and to be care givers in the early years.
- They are not given instructions manuals to raise another human being, they figure it out and along they way they learn and hope they don’t make long lasting mistakes.
- They deal with fears for their children, but have to control it for the sake of letting their children grow and learn.
- They have to grow as humans in order to not fall into the trap of projecting what they want for their kids vs. letting the children decide and make their own mistakes.
- They realize that they are flaw humans and they pray they can improve along the way, so their children will still respect them and their choices when the children grow up to be an audult at 18.
Well, I don’t need my child to thank me now, they will thank me when they are 30 years old.
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Dear daughter,
For your 18th birthday, and on my 48th year, I wish to write down something for you to refer back to in the next 30 years.
I wish to tell you a few simple thoughts to help you to build a life for yourself that 30 years later, you would look back and be proud of the person you have become at 48 years old.
- Don’t be scared that you don’t know your exact future, life cannot be planned exactly.
- Make decisions based on a long term view, it’s okay to have fears and doubts, but frame a decision based on whether this is the right decision 5, 10 or even 20 years later.
- We all have only one life, live your life on your own terms, but do seek advice from several people you trust. Then make the decision and trust your gut. You have made several big decisions that way and it has worked!
- Live your life with no regrets. Sure you might have made a different decision looking back. If there is something you wanted to correct, do it now. If you cannot change the past, forgive yourself.
- You will always be your worst critic, make sure to be kind to yourself.
- Always be creating, art, writing, or something else. This is you!
- Lastly, you never know who will say YES, until you ask. Everyone has fears. I know you have fears. I live with fears all the time.
Dad
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For the last 18 years, my identity is primarily a father and a software engineer. My daughter is going to be 18 years old in a few days and I wanted to remind myself that a large part of my identity is not lost, but changed.
In order for her to be a fully formed adult, I have to learn to let go. Let her find her own path, be her own person without being in the shadows of her parents and her adult guardians.
My opinions should have some weight, but it maybe should weight less than her good friends, her teachers and her future co-workers.
Her mistakes are no longer wrong, it might be just a learning experience. Maybe her father doesn’t need to rescue every single one, until she ask for help?
In the next few months before she is off to college, I still want to spend as much time with her. Just to be with each other. To remember, recall 18 years of traveling, day to day interactions, ways we learn to communicate with each other and the times we each said something that we regretted.
On the one hand, I mourn the lost of this part of my identity. On the other hand, I am so proud of this caring, talented adult who knows exactly who she is, who her friends should be and such a loving person.
Thank you C8. I love you. Onward and upwards.
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I loved this book and will keep and re-read again in a year.
Each chapter is about 10 pages, which fits very nicely with my “read 10 pages of a book” habit in the morning.
It gives a little bit of science with each advice given on how to build long lasting good habits and break bad habits. The cheat sheet is at http://atomichabits.com/cheasheet
Some ideas from the book that I didn’t know about
- Design your environment. Make the cues of good habits obvious and visible.
- Use temptation bundling. Pair an action you want to do with an action you need to do.
- Use the 2 minute rule. Downscale your habits until they can be done in two minutes or less.
- Use reinforcement. Give yourself and immediate reward when you complet you habit
- Never miss twice. When you forget to do a habit, make sure you get back on track immediately.
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(The photo is of a parking ticket paying machine, it wants to do a lot in terms of payment, but very confusing)
Last week, I decided to leave my smartphone at my desk with only a sharp pencil and my notebook. Yes, I did feel more engaged during the meeting, but I also felt like I was missing my phone.
My current state of my phone
- I have deleted all video based apps (YouTube, Hulu, Netflix) and only have those apps that are education based
- I have deleted all news based apps (NyTimes) and use Pocket to read/listen to articles that have saved from previous browsing to be read later
My plan to further curve usage
- Charging my phone in a cabinet away from my bed
- First 45 minutes of waking up, I do a 45 minute routine of meditation, stretching, reading, biking, writing a blog post before touching a phone
- Shutdown my phone in restaurants when I am with someone else
- Leave my phone at my desk during a meeting
- Leave my phone at my desk when I’m meeting up with someone else
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This week I checked myself during a conversation where I let my own pride, fear and stubbornness get in the way of hearing the opinion of someone else.
My fear of doing something uncomfortable. My pride of asking for help. My stubbornness in thinking that my way is the only correct path forward.
I accept my own mind swirling down the dark path, check it and move on with accepting that another path is just as good.
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Could it be that simply to calculate the value of my backlog at work? I once heard on a podcast that a simple way for a startup founder to prioritize all the product backlog in order to focus is via a spreadsheet and do hard ranking. Difficulty x cost x quantity == value? While I agree with maybe having a simple formula for value would make it easier to plan, maybe the formula could be an inverse of cost? Difficulty x quantity x 1/cost = value? I don’t really know, but it would be super interesting to be able to have a mental model for value.
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My plan is to visit every San Francisco Public library by having my reserved books delivered there and write down what is different and new that I learn there.
At Ocean View, the library is super friendly and when I mentioned I’m trying to see all the libraries, he said they get mostly neighbor folks here.
What I learned
- There is a Techout program where you can borrow MiFi devices along with a Google Chromebook
- They have a community room that can be reserved upstairs
- There was a funny daughter-father team, where the daughter was just lying around waiting for her father to work or read. She is likely13 years old, but it’s odd that she is just lying about.
The books that I borrowed today
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Last week a senior software engineer who has deep knowledge in a very specialized and high value skill (Machine Learning) for our company asked me for advice on getting more exposure and impact for her work. She was in a situation where her skills and opinions are sought after by senior leaders in engineering, product management and individual contributors.
I suggested that she start drafting up a 2 year plan, pretend that she has already been promoted 2 levels higher than she is now, and when she meets people at different levels, she can talk to them about that specific level that fits the audience. The most interesting part of my proposal is that she mentally get over the hump that she is not senior enough. I have seen very high potential individuals who are not as qualify as her really shine by operating in the next level. She is uniquely qualify because she is so deeply knowledgable in her area.
The artifact of this 2 year plan, is that she is able to pull it up and talk to product mangers to plan what the next step is, it’s a way to communicate an idea and roadmap clearly, it’s a great way to talk with VP of engineering about what to invest in and an anchoring document to validate whether new architectures align well with the plan. The plan should spell out very clearly the gap between where the company wants to be and where we are now. It should also spell out the level of investment that is needed to get from point A to point B.
I do hesitate whether this is way too bold. Whether this is even possible to operate at 2 levels removed. I personally have not done it, but I also never process the skills needed to be deep in one area. My suggestion would collaborate with someone who is the right place organizationally and also already operating at 2 levels above.
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As an engineer, I’ll give you 4 attributes to define your work to choose from
- Ownership
- Customer focus
- Data driven
- Cadance
You have to chose at least one of these to drive your work. Pick one and focus.
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(The art piece is done by a SF local artist of migrant workers working in California central valley)
Yesterday, my direct report, a principal software engineer who is an expert in our C++ code base presented to over 150 engineers on a piece of code walk through of a “Life of a single data event as it is indexed and searched”. This is a very detailed, meticulous piece of work over the span of 3 months. 3 practice runs (with me, my team of 3 engineers and with 6 beta students). 5 interactions of content to clarify the content and presentation. 1 trial post production video editing.
After the 1 hour and 30 minutes of video content, we are doing one more round of post production editing to get better audio, camera and webcast material spliced together.All this work is in preparation for
- Presenting this material to every newly hired engineer to Splunk
- Have existing engineers watch it before they join the Splunk C++ team
- As a template for how to build deeper content
All this work might go under appreciated if we also don’t invest in
- Finding a good baseline measurement before the training
- Measuring again after the training
- Taking feedback to collect what other pieces of content to create
It is a lot of work to prepare, but hopefully worth the effort
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(The photo is a piece of in store made of thick bacon from Luke’s, Cole Valley, San Francisco)
A potential engineer doesn’t have to like math, abstract thinking, typing on the computer all day creating software. I head an interview with a IBM Fellow, who happens to be a woman say that she didn’t fit the well known profile of a geek.
What she likes to do is to solve puzzles. The harder the puzzle, the more interest she had. Hard problems pique her interest. This statement really resonates with me. In software engineering, we have problems that are not deterministic. The folks who don’t let that frustrate them, succeed and make the largest impact.
Here is a small problem, how to prevent the grease from cooking bacon keep on forming around my morning bacon. This is a hack, but now I am wondering whether there is a cast iron rod I can get to solve the same problem. By elevating one side of the skillet underneath?
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James Clear’s book Atomic Habits – During the early phases of forming a good habit (going to the gym, eating healthier, saving for retirement) there is no immediate reward. However with bad habits (eating ice cream, watching Netlifx, scrolling through Instagram), we get immediate reward.
Unfortunately humans are flawed, we tend to avoid things that give us pain and do more of what feels good as a default. In his book, he recommends building in a reward in order to trick the brain to do more of what is good for us. For example, getting a massage after a workout. Setting aside a fund to Travel to Europe, when we skip going to the restaurant.
Atomic Habits is one of the most easy to read and actionable book I have encountered. Each chapter is 10 pages, at the end there are bullet items to summarize the book.
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We can talk about what we value but until we put our time and our money as wagers, talk is cheap.
In the book Atomic Habits, the author James Clear suggest that repetition is the key to forming habits. Doing 5 minutes of reading every day, is way better than spending 6 hours reading a book every 6 months. Taking 100 photos and iterating, is better than taking 1 perfect photo a year.
As an example about my parents, agreeing to pay for a new car with the safety features for my parent is better than talking about worrying about my dad driving at his age.
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Put yourself in the shoes of the other. When was the last time you put yourself out there and you asked for help and was rejected? Regardless of how nice the rejecting was, how did you feel about yourself?
Now look at the person asking for help. How much of your ‘precious’ time and energy does it take to help them and give them more help than they even initially ask for? Did you spend 30 minutes watching a YouTube video? Did you spend 30 minutes scrolling through your Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest feed? Can you honestly say that the 30 minutes of infinite scrolling was more valuable than helping a person who was courageous enough to reach out for help?
Now get out there and help. Set expectations low and over deliver.
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Last week at work, I learned that an executive has been working on a diversity and inclusion effort monthly. They really care about moving the needed to increase the gender and under represented diversity in our engineering ranks.
I was pleasantly surprised that they are so active in this area. I personally have not heard it from my direct chain of command. I have not heard individual contributors mention that they felt the leadership care deeply enough. We do hear it from our company’s top leaders. We see it in our campaigns. Now that our division leader also express their deep engagement, this is very positive news.
This brings me to my point. If you are a leader, and there is something you are actively working on and you care about it, please communicate! Communicate directly via email. Communicate directly in a blog post.
After you communicated once, next month, communicate again.
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Yesterday, one member of my badminton group reinjured his knee which was already hurting from a skiing accident. He wanted to play yesterday because he loved the sport and thought he could still play and take it easy. Unfortunately, we pushed him pretty hard on court, and he collapsed in pain when he twisted his knee again. I hope he does recover 100% soon.
When we are young, we often think we are invulnerable. Our bodies will of course recover. We might also over estimate our ability to have micro control over our bodies.
If we take a long view of our life, making a decision to take a 3 to 4 week break to nurse back an injury seems like the obvious right choice. Have a framework to make decision to optimize for the long term, will make decisions easier.
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Today, I picked up a strawberry muffin and coffee from Bello Coffee and Tea in Glen Park. When I first saw the total bill was $5, I was taken aback. $2.5 for a coffee and $2.5 for a muffin. Was it ringed up incorrectly? It was so much lower than I would expect.
My usual coffee places are $4.5 for coffee, $4 to 6 for pastries.
Then I pay more attention to the owners/workers at the cafe. They were a middle aged Chinese couple. Or I am guessing. I wonder if the ownership had changed?
My best guess is that they are going for a volume business and they are still figuring out the right pricing model.
Or, I am just too used to fancy coffee places and charge a lot more because they pay a living wage to their workers?
My morning started with a surprise.
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I’ve been thinking about why we trust certain people but keep others at arms length. This was inspired by seeing how a colleague navigates their interactions with meeting new people in the company.
For people (other) in our work and personal life who we don’t feel an increase in trust – Our intuition tells us that the other might not be someone we can easily talk with. The other might not be on the same wave length as us. The other is not sharing anything personal nor vulnerable with us. We often make a judgement in the first few minutes after meeting the person. And so it goes. We make our judgement, unless the evidence turns drastically in a short period of time, the lack of trust remains and the level of distance defines the relationship.
Why do we seek advice from a few people, but not others? We have to feel this sense of trust – that when we open up a small sliver of vulnerability, the other will not store it as ammunition to be used to future gains. We have to see that the other is listening before making judgements. We make micro-judgements during face to face conversations to decide whether we will make continued investments in our trust bucket.
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I also deleted Facebook, stop using any apps that are personalized infinite scroll apps, but did not add tracker blocker. It is interesting to see this person actually bought less online as a result of not getting personalized ads.
I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here’s What Changed (and What Didn’t). https://nyti.ms/2YdvvKk
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( my opinions are my own and not my employer)
I just read this article:
NY Times: Facebook Did Not Securely Store Passwords. Here’s What You Need to Know. https://nyti.ms/2YdyAKj
As an engineer, I don’t understand how it could happen to a company like Facebook.
- They have engineers and security folks who audit designs and code. They know that it has been insecured for many years.
- Storing password in plain text is a huge NO, NO in CS 101
- It is totally reckless of a company with so many high paid people. It is as if a bank said all their safe deposit boxes can be opened by any employee
- Why would a young engineer work for FB when this shows that you won’t learn to be a great engineer in this engineering org?
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I write a lot of internal documentation, blogs to convey ideas for my future self as well as for engineers internally to reference.
Younger engineers often are reluctant to write anything other than code.
Here are reasons to write
- Writing something down clarifies your own understanding of the topic
- It’s one of the highest leverage of your time and work because one piece of writing can be read by hundreds of engineers who could be helped by your writing.
- Writing gives you exposure to people who might not not heard of you.
- Years from now, you can go back to the writing and refresh your ideas, or help you learn something you might have forgotten to do.
- Writing down something that only you know, helps free you from that work when/if someone is willing to take over your work.
Write often.
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Our VP Of Engineering asked us to think about this at work. We are all busy at work, but are we adding value to our customers with what we are doing now?
What is the next most important item on our backlog that add value to our customer immediately?
It’s a great way to prioritize relentlessly. I struggle with knowing how to prioritize in most of my career. I tend to work on a lot of projects all at once and taking a long time to deliver value.
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How do you know when a training is effective? NPS score is a measure of whether the participants would high recommend someone else to take the training. But I wanted to switch up the metrics to measure outcome and confidence.
At work, we are delivering a deep dive training to engineers to teach them about how Splunk works behind the hood.
Instead of measuring their NPS score about the training, I decided to measure the outcome instead.
First we take a baseline with the following question before the training and we’ll ask again after the training to gauge whether there is any difference in outcome.
How confident are you in your ability to make changes to the Splunk C++ code base?
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For my direct report 1:1’s, I’m trying a new structure. I open up a Google Doc that we both have access to for our 1:1’s
- Hearing from them what’s on their mind and discussing
- I bounce some ideas of future work to put on their backlog, some updates that are interesting for them and give them feedback
- They open up their goals and we both work through the update of the status of the goals.
- Key points are captured in Google docs for both of us.
This piece about opening up the goals is nice, because we get really deep into how we each think about each individual goals, specifically how to unblock certain ones and I think allow for a nice sync of our brains.
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If you send an email to me, it’s very likely (95% chance) I will reply
- If you are recruiting me for a position at company X –
- You will get a polite / canned response that “I am extremely happy at Splunk and want to be there for 4 years to help the company grow”.
- If you are selling a product to me, my company or my restaurant –
- You will get a polite / canned response that “I will review your product and get back to you *if* I’m interested”.
- If you are interested in joining San Francisco Badminton –
- You will get a link to read about my group on sfbadminton.org, an internal Google Doc about the group and a link to the Slack channel to try out for the group, which has a canned welcome message as well.
- If you are a not an advanced player, I’ll politely decline.
- If you are asking for a referral to my company –
- If I think really highly of our experience together, I will immediately sent you a glowing review to the job you are interested in to the recruiter and hiring manager.
- If I worked with you before, but I don’t personally know your work, I will ask you to apply directly to the job and tell you that our recruiters do a wonderful job of looking at all candidates. And they really do.
- If you are an email list –
- And I don’t get value from your content, I will unsubscribe you.
- If I actually have clicked on a link to read the content of your email list, then I’ll read something from it and delete after.
- If you are a robot and giving me information about my account –
- I will read and delete you.
- If you are a human and you are responding back to my email –
- You will get a reply, unless the email thread needs no reply.
- If you are someone from work emailing me –
- You will get a response back if a respond is warranted.
- If you get a link in the response, it’s because I’ve written a similar response before for someone else, or I’ve written something new for future folks who will ask similar questions.
- If I think it’s important that I follow up, your email will be flagged
- If I think this is the end of the thread, your email will be archived
- If you are a family member
- I will try very hard to reply back and hopefully give you back more value than your original email.
- If I do not respond to your emailIt is because I’m struggling with the response, please don’t email me again and ask if I saw your previous email.
- Or, it’s very possible that I somehow missed your email *and* I accidentally removed your email without replying. There is a very very slim chance (less than 2% that this is the case)
- *Only* ask me about a missing email, if you are human and you are my co-worker, my friend or my family.Otherwise, don’t ask me “Did you see my previously email”
- If you are recruiting me for a position at company X –
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My full time job is to work on engineering productivity.
Often folks ask me what I do every day / every week?
I often tell them what I’m working on this quarter.
Quarterly Focus
Well, the first quarter in 2019, my focus is on creating coding labs and content for new engineers that join Splunk so they understand what tools are available for them that is uniquely only available at Splunk.
Training New Hires
Every week, I will meet with all newly hired engineers for 2 hours and show them the tools available to them. Every 2 weeks, we will meet for 6 hours and they will do the coding labs we have created for them. I will likely talk with them for 30 minutes about the products at the company, the community, my own story at Splunk and what makes for an effective and impactful engineer. What is the culture in the engineering organization?
Tech Talks
On an ongoing basis, I will solicit internal and external folks who have worked on interesting problems to present during our weekly tech talks. The purpose is to share the work so other might learn and make use of the work themselves. Or the talks are to inspire them to think bigger and beyond their daily work.
Listening
Anther part of my work is just listening to engineers and they may reach out to me to help them get their work done. This could be a wide range of topics. It could range from just looking for the name of someone who could answer a technical problem. It could be just brain storming with me about a problem they have in finding a solution to replicate a problem with a particular mobile app. It could be helping them finding a solution when they feel overwhelmed with too many meetings.
Systemic Solutions
When I listen to an engineer on a specific problem, I often would try to help them solve the initial problem. Make sure they are unblocked. Then my real job kicks it and I need to figure out whether this is a more systemic problem. I would reach out to other engineers and other engineering managers and figure out who else has the same question or problem. Or I would write a document so that others could benefit in the future. I could also create a backlog EPIC so the team of 3 engineers might brainstorm with me on a more longer term and thorough solution.
Non Technical
Still to be written, Saturday badminton awaits
Mentoring
Still to be written, Saturday badminton awaits
Engineering
Still to be written, Saturday badminton awaits
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I was fortunate to attend a talk by BD Wong in San Francisco and the playwright Lauren Yee promoting her play “Great Leap Forward”.
BD Wong is an openly gay Asian man. He talked about how as an adult, he finally announcing to the world about being gay and being very proud to be gay and proud to be Asian.
I was moved to tears after hearing him say he was proud to be Asian.
At the age of 48, I am proud to be many things. I’m proud to be a father, proud to be a software engineer, proud to be a mentor, proud to be a husband, proud to be a mentor.
But.. I don’t think I’ve been proud of my heritage as an Asian.
I am not proud of my accent. I’m not proud of the odd Chinese customs, I make fun of them. I’m not very proud of the small frame of Asian men. I’m not proud that Asian men seem to be lower social status that Asian women seem to want to marry up to Caucasian men.
Work to be done yet
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Two and a half years ago, when I joined my current company I was attending a new hire training and the last slide showed a very long URL to a document that we were suppose to remember for more information.
I asked the presenter whether there is a URL shortener so that we URLs are easy to remember, easy to share verbally and it’s meaningful. The presenter was puzzled and said no.
I researched online and found an open sourced project called YOURLS, asked IT for 2 machines for me to prototyped the solution, launched it and demoed it to my team and emailed an internal list promoting the idea and get feedback.
The feedback was immediate but mostly negative
- Why do we need this, we have gotten along for now without it
- It’s insecure and can be used for phishing
- It’s useless and folks won’t click on it.
- Is this really your job?
There were a few folks who supported the idea because they used URL shorteners like http://bit.ly/ and said to give me a chance.
I continued to work on the project, demo’ing the http://GO/ URL shortener along with enhancements during our quarterly hack weeks. I started sending easy to remember URL’s to common thinks like go/food, go/wifi, go/printer, go/tony
Slowly the serviced gain traction and adoption, but very slowly. After about 2 years, I noticed there was some was drastic changes
- I see posters around the company promoting events and people had a GO link such as GO/printer or GO/security or GO/zoom
- I see in our chat rooms people sharing links such as GO/projectx or GO/help-whatever
- Because I talk about the GO links during new hire training, folks also were asked to create a GO/[your name] to their personal homepage
So what did I learn from this experience?
- For anything that is new and different, it will be a long and difficult journey.
- Being in a company that allows you to experiment is necessary for this type of work to succeed.
- If I truly believe a project is good for the company, I should just continue forward without asking for validation
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By accident I stumbled upon a method to start changing behaviors.
2018
In 2018 I wanted to not buy anything that was not perishable. I wanted to learn to pratice self control.
As the year passed, I wrote down as few rules as I realized the gap between a very strict rule and what else I wanted to accomplish in my life.
- Rule 1: All food and household consumables was okay to buy.
- Rule 2: I chose to buy all the books I wanted to read, because I wanted to read long form and keep on learning.
- Rule 3: No clothing of any kind including socks and underwear ( this was a mistake )
- Rule 4: Nothing that was not a consumable.
I finished the year feeling very good about being able to control what I buy. My only non consumable was a badminton racket, the Astrox 88D.
2019
After a strict rule about not buying , in 2018, I strive to only buy non consumables only once a quarter. So I kept a list of items I will purchase once the quarter window opens up. This should help eliminate impulse buying.
In 2019, I also cancelled Amazon prime since I wanted to ween myself off of addictative services like prime, Netflix.
Small habits
In many habit research, they suggest to
- Replace one bad habit with a good habit.
- Add a new habit on top of another, chaining them together
- Do something small first
To try out suggestion, I have started to wake up earlier and do 5 to 10 minutes of meditation, follow by 5 to 10 minutes of stretching, strength or yoga using the Peloton app. So far, this habit has stuck for 10 weeks. My daily habit is to wake up at 6:25, make coffee, drink a quarter cup, do meditation, stretch and begin the day to get ready.
Part of my bookclub at work is to read through Atomic Habits book by James Clear and using the book to form another new habit.
My next habit is to read 10 pages of a physical book everyday after my morning stretching. Wish me luck.
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Mr. Mossberg, a veteran of The Wall Street Journal, The Verge and Recode, said on Monday he would be deactivating his Facebook account, along with the Facebook-owned Messenger and Instagram apps.
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Netflix’s Journey moving to GraphQL: The visual graphs of the level of abstraction was useful. Seeing Netflix move to GraphQL gives the technology more weight.
https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/our-learnings-from-adopting-graphql-f099de39ae5f
Wow, how did I miss a competitor to React for a multi-platform mobile development platform from Google?
Looking forward to GoLang finally trying to solve the modules issue.
https://blog.golang.org/modules2019
Website discovery : Android / Developer video courses
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Goodbye Quora, you leak my data and I delete my account on your services.
Goodbye Yahoo, you leak my data and I delete my account.
Anyone else?
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Raw notes from the book : The Person You Mean To Be: How Good People Fight Bias
- Not a binary notion, bounded ethicality
- Important to us that we are a good person, we feel threaten when we don’t hit the bar.
- We have blind spots, as a good person, if there is no room from mistakes and blindspots. As an example, if you feel attacked, your desired to be a good person, may prevent you from accepting critisizm.
- Let’s break out the corner, and give ourselves room to grow.
- Being a goodish person and be able to learn from mistakes
- Don’t focus on binary boundaries
- Not evil or good, we are always improving
- Growth mindset or fixed mindset
- We can always grow
- Psychological safety
- “Because I have unconscious bias, I’m not accountable?”
- Prison — education program
- Savior trap – feel good feeling, warm glow
- Puts her above others
- Treat them as people – as normal people
- Headwind and tail wind
- A systems approach is “What are the ways we create more visible headwinds and less tail winds?”
- Even if bias is solved, the system still has bias built in
- What does cultural fit mean? That type of questions creates headwinds
- If you are on the inside, email falculty to signal your interest.
- The email experiment sending the same email to Falculty. With gender, race, fictional students and falculty from different schools. Would the falculty write back?
- Compared with white students – 87% chance of getting a reponse, 62% response to your email
- Work organizations
- Diversity
- Getting into the door, the gateway. Relatively easy to measure
- Inclusion
- Pathway process, not measurable. Who interrupts who, who sits next to who. Everyday moments
- Meetings present opportunties to be inclusive
- Salesforce : Run better meetings, your meetings mirrors your headwinds and tailwinds. Who should be in the room, are we balancing air time, did we interrupt people or not. Did we have a meeting where we disagree? Meetings is like 5th ave realestate
- Belonging
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Recently I have been running dry on my personal motivation on important projects such as transcribing Impactful Engineer.
I have not been able to diagnose what the root cause is. Some possible reasons could be
- Transcription is not what motivates me and hence I’m putting it off
- The overall project and goals is not current aligned with my current mindset
- I am juggling too many things in my life
- Other stress that is de-motivating my focus with Impactful Engineer
- Most likely: I have limited motivation and just need a reboot
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An effective engineering team is highly collaborative, focused on delivering high quality code with velocity. The team sets the standard for other teams to follow in how they design software, write and test their software and ultimately delivering business value to the customer. The team functions as a coherent group, helping each other succeed, having a sense of ownership for the product and code. They actively take ownership of the product backlog, pays down tech debt and communicate outwards to their stakeholders.
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If you are a leader and/or a manager of people, go read You Can’t Be a Great Manager If You’re Not a Good Coach – HBR.org
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This week I practiced what Lyn Campbell recommended during our interview on Impactful Engineer (read here). I asked for feedback from someone I work with. I asked her how she thinks I can improve in meetings.
She generously took the time to give me the following feedback
- During one of our meetings about a previous mentorship program, she said that even though what I suggested was correct, I was too directive and came off as telling what was wrong and what I thought need to be fixed for a mentoring program. Even though my feedback was correct, but because I was very harsh in my delivery, my intention of helping the program may have put the people in a defense mode. Instead I should be much softer in how I phrase my suggestions and perhaps start the sentence with “What if we.. What do you think if we did ..”
It was difficult to listen to harsh feedback, but it was so right on. It’s consistent feedback that I got from my lovely wife about how I am also with my personal relationships.
After this feedback from work, I realize I have obvious behavior changes I need to make. I also wanted to point out that it was hard to hear this type of feedback, but it’s also much needed advice for both at work and in my personal life.
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This YouTube video really cracked me up. An immigrant kid from Hong Kong, born in Shanghai, immigrated to L.A, went to UC San Diego, majored in economics, told his parents he would rather disappoint them for a few years than disappoint himself for life, did standup, drove for Uber, auditioned 100+ times for small parts until he got a permanent spot on Silicon Valley.
Book: How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents (Jimmy O. Yang from Silicon Valley)
- “When you pursue a dream, that’s how you become homeless.”
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So Far
I’ve deleted all my infinite scrolling apps (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter). I’ve stopped reading online news and only read a printed Sunday paper. I’ve paid for products to remove ads (Cruncy Roll, YouTube, Pandora).
Call To Action To Take Back Attention & Time
Today, I listened to the founder of Center For Humane Technology, Tristan Harris, talk being intentional about how we should guard our attention and time from social media apps. He has went to school with the founders of Instagram and he talked about how Instagram’s founder were masters of stealing attention by designing the user interface in ways to hack our brains to come back over and over again to the Instagram app.
After thinking about it a little bit, I thought about buying a flip phone to be used on weekends in addition to my Android Nexus 6P. However, instead of buying another gadget, which will break my vow to not buy anything for one year unless it’s perishable or a book, I’ve decided to do the following life hack on my Android phone.
Creating Clean Workplaces For Every Context
On Android, you can create multiple users who get a completely clean Android home screen with the clean version Android. From that clean slate, I can install apps that allow me to single task. This similar to how you can create new users on your laptop.
Podcast & Deep Thought Context
In this Context I have only
- Pandora – Tuned to Piano Dreams radio for me to concentrate
- BeyondPod – Listen to podcasts, with zero interruptions and incentive to browser or read email
- Google Maps – I could be driving and listening to the Podcast
- Chariot – I may need to look up my ride to work
- Brave Browser – To replace Chrome, by removing ads from Chrom
Nothing from
Gmail, work email, Slack or SMSis interrupting my flow.My activities
- Reading
- Listening to podcasts
- Driving
- Reading a book and do not want interruptions
Physically In The Office Working Context
In this Context I have only
- Microsoft Outlook – work email
- Slack – work chat
- SMS – for my boss to text me for urgent issues
- Okta verify – to get into the work VPN
My activities
- During work hours on weekdays 8 to 5pm
Nothing from
Gmail, YouTube, any personal appsinterrupting my flow.Learning Context
In this Context I have only
- Coursera
- EdX
- TED
- Udemy
- Kindle
My activities
- Learning from video training
All notifications turned off. No email, nothing.
Personal Context
This is the messiest one with everything else. Personal Gmail, Wechat, banking apps, commuting apps and personal Slack channels. This is only the first week that I’m trying this so I could possibly create more contexts as they make themselves known to me.
Why?
These contexts make my intentions known and clear to my brain. Each context is meant to signal that what my primary purpose is. The completely controlled context is forcing me to single task, finish that portion and then move to the next context intentionally.
The contexts are discrete from each other. An example is that there is no multi-tasking when I’m listening to a podcast, I cannot email at the same time. As I physically switch from one context to the others, my brain also switches contexts and get ready for the next focus area. Making the context switching harder and longer will hopefully signal and train my brain to focus on a single task at hand.
What is your hack to take back attention and time?
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Dear future self:
Today, you were frustrated at your teenage daughter that she was 10 minutes later in leaving the house for high school. Even though she is the only one affected, you felt that it reflected on your personal value to be early or on time.
You expressed to your daughter that you were mad at her for being late and you are getting over it soon.
She told you we are now even for the other time that she was angry at you for telling her grandparents something important that she wanted to not disclose.
When you dropped her off and you told her you are all over the issue and she actually arrived 8 minutes early for school. You told her she is the most wonderful daughter, gave her a hug. She remarked that ‘now I am your wonderful daughter!’
Future self, talk about your frustrations. It is not easy and not natural. But keep on practicing it!
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Who Is On Your Team?
Taking a journey alone is not only difficult, lonely but also not sustainable. Starting with simple personal goals such as exercising. If I am only accountable to myself, I can skip a day, skip a week, skip a month, I only have to answer to my nagging self. If I have a team of friends who are waiting for me every day, every week, then meeting them to start exercising is what I look forward to and exercising is just part of what we do together. For example, I started https://sfbadminton and built up a network of people who love badminton and are competitive players. There are 80 people who are part of the SF Badminton social group. Having a team/group is why for 18 months I have been playing badminton consistently every week twice to three times.
Alone – So Easy To Give Up
For 19 weeks, I write an email newsletter that I sent out to 500 engineers every Friday sharing tips that I think they will find useful. I don’t have a team, it’s just me. I have made it happen every Friday, but it’s a difficult task to keep on going. I’m able to keep pushing because I know at the end, if I can keep this pace up for 3 years, my Friday Tips will be a habit and will be a great forum for a team I can bring around the weekly habit.
Team – So Easy And Fun
I am part of team of 5 people to find interesting topics for the company to hear about and we run a weekly tech talk series. We do logistics coordination for the speaker, we help the speaker to get setup, we run the Slack channel for questions during the speaker session and then we follow up afterwards with recording for people who couldn’t join. We provide a great service for all of our engineers as well as give the speaker a great experience. Doing this project is super easy because I have teammates I can lean on. We take our different roles in order to make this series of tech talks useful. I look forward every Monday to work with my team. None of us have to worry about going on vacation and the tech talks will get dropped.
Who Is On Your Team?
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I have recently started a media detox program of not reading online news, online blogs, social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn, FB, Instagram). Instead I am focusing on listening to interview based podcasts and reading physical books.
During this journey of reassessing how I spend my attention and time, I also started powering off my cell phone after I get home until I wake up the next morning.
This is the beginning of a long journey towards changing my life habits. During this discovery phase, I have stumbled upon (virtually) several people that have influenced me deeply.
One such person is Tim Ferris. Through his books (Tribe of Mentors, Tools of Titan) and podcasts (Tim Ferris Show, Tribe of Mentors), he has exposed me to life stories of people (authors, athletes, thought leaders). Most important of all, Tim Ferris has exposed me to books that have influenced the people he interviews in his book and podcasts. For example, Maria Popova is a writer who reads, thinks and writes on brainpicker.org. She reads a lot of books and spend hundreds of hours a month researching and writing. That is her full time ‘job’ if you can call it that.
Another interview based podcast is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. She started out many years ago interviewing designers & artists. But has since expanded her interviews to cover bloggers, authors, and other passionate ‘humans’ (I like the word). Today I just discovered books from Anand Giridharadas, author of ‘True American’, ‘India Calling’. The author claims that he accidentally come across Trumpism in 2011 and that our nation is now torned between those who used to rule America for the last 400 years vs the new minority majority. The next 40 years will be full of tension as the nation readjust to the power shift. For people who want change to happen sooner, be patient. In the arc of history, we are already changing very rapidly.
Reading: I read books. I get more recommendations for more books. I read more books.
Thinking: I listen to Piano Dreamer radio on Pandora, and I think.
Writing: I write blog posts inspired directly or indirectly by the books I read.To those who have questioned my habit. Yes I do watch videos. I watch BWF badminton videos. I watch the shows that my family want to watch with me. That’s it.
Will you join this detox program and get back your attention span?
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Seth Godin writes with the smallest number of words to convey the clearest of messages. Here he explains GDPR and the market’s dilemma
“Talk to people who want to be talked to.
Market to people who want to be marketed to.
Because anticipated, personal and relevant messages will always outperform spam.
And spam is in the eye of the recipient.
In two simple words: Ask First.”
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The myth of ‘good timing’ from Seth Godin
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2018/04/the-moment-of-maximum-leverage.html
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Systemic problems in our society, by definition, seem impossible to fix. Part of the reason is that systemic problems are rooted in how our lives are structured and it’s not under the control of one person, one organization or sometimes even one government. When I was doing a bit or searching around Google, there was a suggestion in the images search for causal loop.
In order to make progress towards fixing systemic issues, start anywhere in the chain and work on breaking at least one of those that is contributing to the continuation of the causal loop causing the systemic problem.
Causal Loop Diagram
I just learn about this type of diagram to look at systemic issues, read more here https://systemsandus.com/2012/08/15/learn-to-read-clds/
More to read
USING CAUSAL LOOP DIAGRAMS TO MAKE MENTAL MODELS EXPLICIT
From: https://thesystemsthinker.com/developing-a-multicultural-learning-organization/
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In June, the two engineers will formally accept a Turing Award, the computer science equivalent of the Nobel Prize, in recognition of their work. Hennessy later became president of Stanford University and is now the chair of Alphabet; Patterson is a professor emeritus at U.C. Berkeley and a distinguished engineer at Google
Listen to the podcast: John Hennessy and Dave Patterson, winners of the Turing Award 2018
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@Tony Tam That’s right! It gives you more control and racket speed if you relax the fingers before you hit, but for power, you still need to figure out how to do the weights transfer! Weight transfer has something to do with the body, shoulder, forearm, and wrist rotation. You used to have problem with the rotation and sequence of the rotation. For example, if you rotate the hip and shoulder at the same time, that is wrong sequence. The correct way to do it is first rotate the hip, then shoulder, elbow, and the wrist goes last. Usually the bigger muscle like hip leads the small muscle like hand or wrist, however; a lot of people do it the other way around just because it’s natural the wrist goes before the body since it reacts faster. That’s why we need to get training for how to move the big/heavy muscle faster and get the sequence correct. People who has poor coordination and core strength will find it challenge.
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Recently I’m experimenting with starting up bookclubs at work in order to meet new people and helping to instill the habit of book reading into my own life.
Here is what I’m doing
- Create a #bookclub channel on Slack
- Create a document with a list of books that anyone can propose
- Once there are 5 people who sign up to read a book, a pop-up bookclub is created
- Another channel on Slack #bookclub-[name of book] is created
- The group of 5 or more people who want to read that book are added to the Slack channel #bookclub-[name of book]
- Then a leader for that new bookclub schedules 5 Friday’s to read the book
- A new person is designated to lead the discussion for 1/5th of the book everyweek so that there is active participation.
- Each week the bookclub reads 1/5th of the book and discuss for an hour
Our first book is “That’s what she said” by Joanne Lipman where the author invites men and women to learn about the perspectives from each gender in order to understand each other more.
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Give this a read, virtues of print news instead of online and breaking news.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/technology/two-months-news-newspapers.html?
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I’m celebrating a milestone for a personal 10 year project and I’m seeking your time and attention.
Impactful Engineer shares the stories and journeys of women and men who are making significant impact in the software industry. The purpose of Impactful Engineer is to inspire young software engineers to see that are many paths they can take to move forward in their careers and grow their impact wherever they work
As I promise to my readers, I embargoed interviews until the first woman engineer interview is done.
The finished version is now published and I can’t wait to share it with my supporters and core audience (young engineers looking to grow and esp. women)
When you have 24 minutes to spare, please read the interview with Lyn Campbell who is a corporate VP, and she graduated an English major. I am looking for feedback on how I can make the site and interviews better.
Here is our first interview with Lyn Campbell, Corporate VP, Global Operations at Proofpoint
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Taking Back Control Of My Privacy
- Goodbye Infinite Scroll Media : LinkedIn App
- Goodbye Twitter @ tonytam
- Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen #deleteAllFacebook (Instagram,WhatsApp)
- Life Strategy #1: Why I Am Only Reading Long Articles and Books
Google Activities
This is the hardest one yet. I love the convenience of Google maps, suggestion browsing history, Google Now voice control, Gmail. I have 7 gmail accounts for different purposes.
Today I went to Google Activity at https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity and turned off all activity tracking and also deleted all activity already saved on Google for All Time.
- Also remember to delete your Google Maps timeline https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
Plan Going Forward
I plan to keep all my activity private until I make a decision to trade off privacy for convenience. Fingers crossed that this will work!
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There is a Chinese proverb 難得糊塗 that my dad put up on the wall of our home which he wrote the calligraphy with Chinese ink and paper. Every day at home, I would see it. When I was younger, my dad was very angry and frustrated with life. And I like to be believe that he stared it at everyday asking himself to change, to ignore things that are not important, to live life a little more carefree.
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Recently I have made choices on how I spend my time and this has helped me decide what I say YES to and more importantly what I say NO to
Optimize for time over money
If I had to choose between taking muni or Lyft to work, I choose Lyft. Muni takes 45 minutes for a 4 mile trip to downtown San Francisco. Lyft costs more, but gets me there in 20 minutes. I pull up my laptop and write a blog post while I’m in Lyft.
Optimize for attention
I install a free AdBlocker, but I donate $15 for it in order to get rid of ads on webpages. I pay for ad free Hulu, ad free YouTube, ad free Crunchyroll.
I stop reading news and just read books and the Sunday newspaper delivered to my home.
I listen to Piano Dreamers radio when I write, read and not music with lyrics because I can only single task, no one can multitask!
Optimize for family
My family comes before almost everything except my own health. Spending time with my daughter, my wife & my parents always bubbles to the top.
Optimize for deeper meaningful relationship
I only have 2 really close friendships, that is all I have time for. And even that I don’t spend enough time nurturing.
I spend time mentoring several women at work and I try to spending meaningful time with them to help them with advice they are seeking.
Optimize for long term
My time and interaction has a long term focus. Long term is 10 years, 15 years. So I optimize for long term vs short wins.
Optimize for scope of impact
I spend time to have deeper impact on a single person, but I optimize for larger impact. For example, I may spend hours mentoring a person but I might distill that work into a blog like impactfulengineer.org to help hundreds later.
Optimize for no regret
I say YES to anything that I will regret when I am dying on my deathbed.
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My daughter loves watching anime (Haikyuu, Yuri on Ice), she adores owning physical books, she loves drawing anime characters. She is sometimes quiet about other things, but never about these unmistakable passions in her life.
She is unwavering, unapologetic and ever in love with these passions in her life.
It is infectious, because of her, I am loving physical books again.
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I loved this book (Tell Me More, by Kelly Corrigan). Once started, I couldn’t put it down. It is a book about the author’s journey to learn to do and say the hardest things in life. To learn to listen to her daughter and her dying father. I will just quote from her website instead.
In “I Don’t Know,” Corrigan wrestles to make peace with uncertainty, whether it’s over invitations that never came or a friend’s agonizing infertility. In “No,” she admires her mother’s ability to set boundaries and her impressive willingness to be unpopular. In “Tell Me More,” a facialist named Tish teaches her something important about listening. And in “I Was Wrong,” she comes clean about her disastrous role in a family fight—and explains why saying sorry may not be enough. With refreshing candor, a deep well of empathy, and her signature desire to understand “the thing behind the thing,” Corrigan swings between meditations on life with a preoccupied husband and two mercurial teenage daughters to profound observations on love and loss.
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Taking Back Attention
I’m going on a detox program with media
- Goodbye Infinite Scroll Media : LinkedIn App
- Goodbye Twitter @ tonytam
- Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen #deleteAllFacebook (Instagram,WhatsApp)
Thank you brain trust member : Seth Godin
After I have done my detox, I find this gem in my email
Your laptop and your phone work the same way. The reviews and the comments and the breaking news and the texts that you read are all coming directly into the place you live. If they’re not making things better, why let them in?
- Seth Godin
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I have removed Facebook
I have removed TwitterFeb 8th, 2018 – Today I have removed the LinkedIn app from my phone. It was a difficult decision because I have been using the LinkedIn app to catch up posting from my professional connections as well as messaging people on LinkedIn.
Why?
- I’m trying to read more long form content, LinkedIn postings have trained me to do the thumb swipe and scroll continuously, bookmark articles that I want to read later. I don’t want to be trained anymore by infinitely scrolling apps.
- The 2nd posting on LinkedIn is *always* an advertisement which I cannot block on my mobile phone, but I do block using Chrome extension AdBlock. I already pay to get rid of ads everywhere I can, LinkedIn does not offer that option
What’s Next?
- I still extract more value from LinkedIn by connecting with my professional network for interviews for ImpactfulEngineer.org. I will only use LinkedIn.com on my Chrome browser and observe how I use the site keeping in mind that I optimize for time, attention and deep connections. See How I Optimize
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On Saturday April 8th, 2018 12:15am I decided to make my twitter.com account @tonytam protected. It is one of the many steps of media detoxification. Once in a while, I do get exposed to something of value from the 250+ people I follow on Twitter.
But the price of admission for these nuggets of information is likely my attention span for scanning news / information, instead deeply reading the content. Twitter is the easiest platform to scan and not read because the people who tweet optimize their words to fit 140 characters in order to generate the most impact with their words.
What I’m going to do instead is to export my Twitter account information, print out the people I follow and do research on their work and find long form content (books, blog posts, podcasts, speaking engagements) and consume those more thoughtful content instead.
Next Steps
- Generate a new long hash password for Twitter and set the verification phone number to be my wife’s and my home number so that it will be difficult if I wanted to login again
pdf : People followed by @tonytam on Twitter
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This podcast episode from one of My ‘Virtual Brain Trust’, Seth Godin, has given me a framework to talk about how I’ve structured my life around longer term vision leading to the right short term actions.
Seth Godin’s Akimbo Podcast
Finite and Infinite Games
The idea is that there are finite games and infinite games. Finite games is liken to short term thinking and infinite games are very long term vision.
Give it a listen: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/akimbo/e/53873622?autoplay=true
- You only need to listen to the 26 minute mark.
Show notes https://www.akimbo.me/blog/episode-7-game-theory-and-the-infinite-game
Also related Simon Sinek: The Finite and Infinite Games of Leadership: tech talk at Google
The original book Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse
Tony’s Infinite Games
For example, some of my long term visions (Infinite Games) are
- Playing badminton until I am 80 years old
- Having a trusting, open, loving relationship with my daugther
- Helping my daughter have meaningful work for the next 40 years of her life
- Having zero regrets if I were to die in the next 2 hours
These long term visions drives me towards the right short term behaviors
- I do not compete in a lot of badminton tournaments and I don’t train super hard to avoid injuries
- I talk to my daughter about my own parenting choices, I model behaviors that I want her to do
- I do not push her to top name colleges just because they are top ranked. I do not push her to majors that is not right for her. I recommend to her to not chase to enter an elite college just because it’s hard to get into. She does not need to play the finite game of college admissions.
- I imagine what I would regret on my death bed, or at my parent’s death bed. If there is something I think I will regret not doing, I make myself do it asap. I tell my family that at this very moment in time, I do not have any regrets if I die. My wife tells me that she believes I have done everything I want to do.
My own interpretations
- Finite games have definite beginning and end. They usually have teammates and opponents. There are rules that are known and some are unknown. Most importantly there is a scarce resource that is coveted. There usually are winners and by definition losers. Some finite games are entrance to coveted colleges like Harvard, the Stanley Cup, getting the next promotion at work.
- Infinite games are those where there are no rules. Players who play at infinite games are playing for the long game. They don’t focus on opponents because they themselves are their opponents. They choose not to play the short game or finite games. They create a category. For example, instead of playing the game of the $10,000 computer, IBM made the $1,000 PC for every home. Apple put a supercomputer in the pocket of everyone that knows your location and is always connected. Podcast creator for Overcast put out the app for free to create a bigger pie in the Podcast marketplace.
- For young people: When we focus on the infinite game, we plan 30 years ahead. If we put our horizon 30 years, is the entrance to Harvard that important? Should we instead find the college that best suit what we want to be doing for work for 30 years? Is making a lot of money really what we want to be our vision for our life for 30 years?
- For parents: If we extend our horizon out 30 years for our children. In our daily interaction, what is really important? Is putting away dishes 100% of the time really important? Or is giving her a hug every single day and telling her you think her art is really good and she should continue? For the long term, is it better for her to get perfect homework and grades or for her for fail a few times and for her to seek out help from friends and teachers so that she learns how to recover from failure?
- For yourself: At work, if you extend out 30 years. In your current job, is it better for get the next promotion by stepping over your co-workers. Is it better to be focusing inwards on the next reward or making all your teammates better? Is it better for be known for someone who people love to work with again in the future. So that in 15 years, when you reach out to your network, people will be your promoter behind your back. And they gladly accept any request for help from you?
From Simon Sinek:
- Infinite game players focus on vision, something that is always going to be out of reach.
- Finite game players work at the tactical level
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This post is not meant for you, it’s meant for me; So no need to read.
Start With “What”
People ask for advice. “What should I do, I’m running into this situation where I don’t know whether I should choose A or B?”
Rather than telling them what they should do, I have been realizing that I don’t have the right answer either because I’m not an expert in the area that they person is asking. Instead, I ask them to take a leap of faith with me and imagine the world 6 months or 1 year from now.
Let’s Jump To The Future
I would ask the person, to imagine what success looks like, regardless of which path to take. A or B. This definition of success, would the most hard to please person also agree that the success is undeniable? Would your team agree that this success is also so obvious that it would drive them toward this goal?
Now given this picture of success, which path should you take, A or B?
If the answer is obvious, then we have a winner!
What If It’s Neither?
Alright, now it gets fun! Let’s say option B sounds more like the ultimate solution, but it’s not perfect yet. What if I ask you to take B, and instead of finishing 100% of the work, but executed at average quality. Take option B, do only 50% of what you originally sign up for, but do it really well, teach another team, have the other team accept responsibility for the work and your team can move on and do the same for a new team? Even though you could only accomplish 50% of the work, the team you taught is now self sufficient, you are not weighted down by the work as you move from team to team to help them.
Principal Of How To Think About Problems
When I have been taught how to think through a problem, and ultimately come up with a solution on my own, I have come away learning one of the principals of how to think about problems. With this way of thinking, most class of problems can be solved the same way over and over again. This is why, with the right person, I also try to pass on this technique.
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On March 27th, 2018, I’ve decided to remove all my accounts on the following Facebook-owned apps: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
- Facebook.com – This is easy because I only have 1 connection.
- Instagram – This is a little harder because I use the message feature to talk to 2 people on iOS devices. So now we have to figure out how to chat from iOS devices to Android while not wanting to install yet another messaging app.
- WhatsApp – This is the most difficult but I decided to bite the bullet and move all 95 members of my badminton social group to Slack.
The people in my social group asked why I am making this move given that we really don’t have privacy anymore
Ad Driven Business Models Have The Wrong Incentives
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Their incentives are to mine our data, the people we are connected to in order to grow their reach and depth of understanding of our behaviors. I’m moving to Slack because their business model is to build a delightful product so that we will pay for it, not to sell ads. These 2 business models drive very different incentives for the employees who work there.
It’s Time, We Can Do It, #deleteFacebook
- My friends are saying they have been in Facebook for a long time now, their privacy is already lost. My argument is that this is like quiting cigarettes, just because you have been smoking for 10 years, it doesn’t mean you should continue.
Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Data Be Stolen
- Like the campaign “Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk”. Being on Facebook doesn’t just expose your data to advertisers. The ‘friends’ that are connected to you also are at risk of having their data scrapped without them knowing. Even if you protect your data, if you allow any app to connect to your Facebook account, your friends’ data will be exposed as well. See how it was done to 50 million users
I Know It Is Hard
- I know it’s hard to change your habits. I know it’s hard to be FOMO. I know people will ask you to come back to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp
- I am on the other side now, I know it’s a better place.
- I also know that there are naysayers
- Tony, you have Google, isn’t that the same thing?
- Yes Google knows a lot about me, I use their phone, but I’m not exposing my friends’ privacy. Google doesn’t have the same type of social network.
- Just because I’m using Google, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t delete Facebook
- Tony, you have no friends on Facebook to connect to, that’s why it’s so easy.
- The friends I want to talk with, I see them face to face or I will call them on the phone. Or I will create a private chat room focused on talking to people I have common interests with.
- 500+ friends on Facebook do not need to see me spam them.
- If they cared, they can always follow me on
- sfbadminton.org – I play badminton weekly with 95+ people
- impactfulengineer.org – I interview people and help engineers
- tonytam.org – I blog for my daughter and my future self
- Oh Tony, you are are just weird!
- You can be weird, just like me! Why do you want to be like the other 2 billion Facebook users?
- Tony, you have Google, isn’t that the same thing?
If you need support, ping me.
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Recently there has been news reporting about #deleteFacebook, #metoo, #marchforourlives and #nevergain. You can track the interest over time at Google Trends
For me, I wanted to know the relative traction each of these movements are actually making. Looks like #deleteFacebook is gaining traction, check back in 7 days to see if the internet meme continues.
While I’ve done #deleteFacebook a few years ago, I got back on recently just to connect to one person but now, I’m deleting it yet again.
#deleteInstagram https://help.instagram.com/370452623149242
This page is http://bit.ly/delAllFacebook
Facebook.com – DONE March 27thInstagram – DONE March 27th- WhatsApp – I am moving my 90+ badminton social group to Slack! Done by April 30th.
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Life Strategy #1
I optimize for time, attention and deep thought (see How I Optimize). This is part of what I will say YES to and will guide me in what I will say NO to on requests for my time.
Starting in March 2018, I have disconnected from reading news as a daily habbit. I will read news (nytimes, Twitter) only once a week. If it is important someone will be talking about it, it will be in my weekly newspaper.
I am substituting that hour a day of reading news for
- Listening to podcasts
- Reading books like ‘Tell Me More’
- Planning my long term passion projects like Impactful Engineer
- Learning about how to teach my teenage daughter on how to think through decisions instead of what to do or what to do.
Maxwell Anderson writes about this on Medium:
There can be no real thinking in News reports because explaining takes time (i.e., space). So News is made up of statements rather than arguments, which has a serious effect on our minds. When News constitutes almost all of our reading, we fall into the habit of thinking that opinions are the same as thoughts. The News alludes to a debate but only shows us a clash of opinions. As a result, we forget how to carry on a debate, and fall back on polls.
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http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/02/09/facebooks-desperate-smoke-screen/
The Smoke Screen
In my opinion, the first problem — the engineered addiction — is the more pressing issue surrounding social media. These services relentlessly sap time and attention from peoples’ personal and professional lives that could be directed toward more meaningful and productive pursuits, and instead package it for resale to advertisers so the value can be crystalized for a small number of major investors.
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Welcome To My Introvert World
I used to be ashamed to be an introvert. I thought I was weird for not enjoying cocktail parties. Everyone else seem to be having a grand old time, small talking about the weather, what they did for a living, leaving a conversation after 5 minutes so they can mingle some more while always holding a drink in their hands.
I hated parties, when I had to go one, I would stay for a bit, hangout for an hour or so, trying to enjoy myself, but I just couldn’t understand what I was missing? Why go to parties to hang out in a circle with people they already knew? Or why talk about very shallow subjects that was not interesting at all. They might meet a stranger and talk but conversations were not meaningful and no real long lasting connections made. It feels like party goers have an agreement that if one person was pleasant, the other would play along and wait for the party to end.
Whenever I would meet someone a party and make a connection where we talk about deeper subjects, I would talk for hours and share honest thoughts, I tend to enjoy myself. But it is rare that a stranger would hang out with me for that long.
Accept and Embrace
Everything changed after I heard the TED talk from Susan Cain on the Power Of Introverts. With 20 minutes of my time watching the TED talk, this completely changed how I valued my introversion and how I embraced my daughter’s introversion. I no longer apologize to my daughter’s teachers that she doesn’t raise her hands in class. If she has something meaningful to say, she will say it. Give her a bit of time for her to form her thoughts and she will give you a thoughtful answer.
Now I am proud to be an introvert. I decline parties that I don’t enjoy unless my wife think it’s important. When I’m there, I am content to just enjoy myself, without needing to talk. I listen, I observe, I am content with my introversion self.
After accepting that there is nothing wrong with being an introvert, I’ve started to embrace attributes of extroverts to add to my arsenal. Some examples are:
- I’ve built a group of 90+ badminton players at https://sfbadminton.org, talking to players I’ve never met. Welcoming travelers who just want to play with my group for a few days.
- I’ve created the Impactful Engineer website to interview people I have known as well as engineers I have never met.
- I’ve written a public blog at https://tonytam.org since 2005 with 600+ blog posts
Are You An Introvert, Extrovert or Ambivert?
Take the test https://www.quietrev.com/the-introvert-test/
Quiet Revolution WebSite
If you wanted a bit more information, subscribe to Susan Cain’s website at Quiet Revolution https://www.quietrev.com/ and her resources for introverts
Interviews With Susan Cain
Read her interviews at https://www.quietrev.com/media/
Quiet: The Power of Introverts
If you want to go deeper, read her book
“Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking“
An Introvert Trying Out Extroversion
(This photo is my brother in law and I playing tennis with 2 women we just met in Lake Tahoe) 
10 of us from the sfbadminton.org group played at Stanford, go Cal! -
From Raji Rajagopalan – Principal Software Engineering Manager at Microsoft
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/whats-your-happiness-list-raji-rajagopalan/
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Thank you Justin Baldoni, because of your speech I *know* I need to dedicate 10 years of my life to mentoring women engineers!
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(The photo is my sfbadminton.org group playing a badminton tournament at Stanford)
Why Do I Blog Publicly?
Before I answer that question. I will tell you who is the audience for my blog at tonytam.org.
Audience
I write the blog with me as the primary target audience. The reason I write is to clarify and structure my thinking. I write for my future self in 3 years, 5 year and 10 years to look back on what my thought process was today. It is both to remember what was important to me in the past and process in which I arrive at decisions.
My secondary audience is my daughter. I have been blogging for over 14 years, since March 2005 when she was 4 years old. I started capturing my thoughts and interactions with her. I want to show her future self what our life was like when she was young and how I was learning to be a single divorced father. I wish to show her my thought process as a father. To show her what kind of child she was to me. I wanted to show her how I struggled and learned as a father. How I tried very hard to care for her as my daughter and most importantly as a little human being. To show her my own vulnerabilities. To show her that it’s okay to be a faulty human being and still deserved to be loved. To show her how I made decision balancing her needs and my own needs as an individual outside of being her parent.
The third audience are the strangers on the internet, my acquaintances and my other family members who may find some of my blog posts ‘interesting’. These readers are not my primary audience. In this personal blog, I do not write for them.
Writing primarily for myself has allowed me the freedom to continue to write without worry about judgement or lack of interest.
Why Write Publicly?
So why not write in a private journal? In Evernote, Google Docs and keep my thought private? First of all WordPress allows for very rich content management and presentation. I get inspired when I can add photos to my own content. WordPress offers sorting, search by date. I can category blog posts into multiple categories and tag my content.
Still, why write in a public blog and not a private, hidden blog?
Accountability
Writing publicly make me accountable to .. myself! Having a private blog, which I also do for very private thoughts, does not help encourage me to write regularly. Publishing my blog publicly helps me keep on writing and keep on sharing.
Even though ‘strangers or my acquaintances’ are not my primary audience, they are the community that help me be accountable. This is very much like having an exercise buddy helps people get up and go to the gym.
Thank you readers!
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My mom’s 2 sisters, 1 brother and god sister.
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Learn something, learn anything.
Learn a new sport, learn to be better at a sport you are good at.
Learn a new skill, learn to use part of your brain you seldom use.
Learn to be empathetic, learn to listen to others.
Learn how to love yourself more than you do at this moment.
Learn about how someone else thinks, ask questions about them.
Learn Or Languish.
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I Have A Point .. Bare With Me :D
There are great companies in the eyes of the public. These could be
- Fortune’s 100 best places to work
- US Stock Market top 10 companies by market cap
- Companies with most number of eye balls
- <insert> however you want to define great companies
Now let’s say your company is a ‘great’ company. Then by the transitive property in math
- If a = b and b = c, then a = c
- If you (a) = company (b), company (b) = great (c), then you (a) = great (c)?
That was weird, do you (a) = company (b)?
Let’s break this down
If you are the founder, do you = company?
- If you are a founder of 1 employee, then yes!
- If you are a founder of > 1 employee, then no because there are others who contributed to the company.
If you are on the board of directors and by definition usually not an employee, then you ≠ company.
If you are an employee, and not the founder of one person then you as a single entity does not encompass the entire company. So you ≠ company so you ≠ great just because company = great.
Now, let’s assume you = great, company = great and you ≠ company, then you = great not because of the company and also company = great not just because of you.
What Is The Point?
My point is, just because a company you work for is a great company in the public’s eye, don’t get it in your head that by definition you are a great person. You still have to work hard and do good to be deserving of greatness.
For the people on the outside looking at great companies, the people who work there are not all great people. So no need to be envious. Just be a great human wherever you are!
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Presentations!!
I don’t like giving presentations, even though my job and my passion with Impactful Engineer requires me to.
Why Don’t I like Presentations?
- I don’t like my voice in front of a big audience
- I don’t speak clearly enough and I sometimes mumble
- I don’t enunciate words clearly (I learned English when I was 15, but that is not an excuse). I just never spent the time to learn English properly
- I feel like a fraud (mostly when I don’t prepare)
- I like to procrastinate ^^^^
Why Should I Do Presentations
- My job as the head of Engineering Productivity requires me to speak and reach out to a lot of developers, engineering leadership, new hires
- I love my job ^^^
- I write a website Impactful Engineer https://impactfulengineer.org where I interview software engineering leaders. If I wanted to spread the word, which I do, I need to present to people to encourage them to read and learn.
What I Could Do
- I could join toastmasters
- I could sign up for 1:1 training (many resources out there)
- I could just make myself to continue to do it poorly, which I do now
What I Am Hacking To Do
- I prepare and do mock presentations by myself
- I accept invitations when my manager do pre-presentation sessions
- I record myself doing the mock presentations with video as well as audio transcription service Trint which really shows me how poorly or well I’m pronouncing words!!! I love love this hack!
Next Steps
- While I hack with fixing my pronunciation, I will join toastmaster to fix the fear of speaking in front of an audience.
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Imagine this
… Someone invites you to a 1/2 hour meeting on a topic you are familiar with and an agenda that is clear
…… You spend 2 hours researching, writing down your thoughts ahead of time with 3 possible solutions and with pros and cons
……. You go into the meeting, you ask the person whether your ideas made sense and during the meeting you present your findings, discuss, debate and collaborate.
…….. What do you think the person who called the meeting will think of you? Will they be your promoter or detractor?
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Here are my current tools to getting things done in 2018. I optimize for capturing 100% of my brain on paper or electronic. I do not optimize for having only a single place for a task or idea.
Things that are time sensitive or urgent
- I use Google Reminders with time due dates
- I also block out chunks of time on my calendar to work on the item.
- I write this on a 3×5 index card
- I write it in my bullet journal
Longer term goals and important things like health, family, money, personal
- These are important, not urgent. I use Trello as a planning tool and kanban board to jot down all my ideas. Everything that is important to me in my life is on Trello. I have over 50 kanban boards. This includes food menus, life goals with my wife, how I want to raise my child, what my commitment is to my parents, my life goal to be a teacher of computer science, my reading list.. everything!
- I also use a physical notebook and I follow the bullet journal system. I implement a few of customized differences (which I’ll write about later)
Really long term and very important things
- I create a public WordPress blog so that I externalize my work and hold myself accountable
- I create a private WordPress blog for very private journals so I can see a time view of my thinking. This is for myself to read in 5, 10, 20 years.
For Work projects that I collaborate with someone at work
- I create a public page with tasks and I share that with my co-workers and we jointly collaborate
For private notes from 1:1
- I create a simple text file and upload to our corporate box folder and keep them private
For incoming emails that I need to take action on
- I create a set of folders for important people and prefix them from 0 to 9, follow by their names.
- I flag emails that I need to send follow ups
For meetings and action items
- I usually send the agreed upon actions items
- Or I create a ticket in our bug tracking system
- Or I create a document, whatever is appropriate
Multi-tasking
- I try to not multi-task, and instead create multiple timers (5mins, 10 mins, 15 minutes) that are task specific (Teeth cleaning 15m, news reading 5 minutes, work on my website 15 minutes, email cleaning 5 minutes)
Emails
- My goal is to respond to every email, or unsubscribe to spam emails. The goal is to drive the Inbox to zero, while never achieving it.
Browser
- I use the Taco Chrome extension to bring in Trello, gmail that I have starred so that I see a background of my daughter, with the list of things to do and one to three most important things to focus on.
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(This is the first blog post of Impactful Engineer, make sure to sign up for our monthly interviews with software engineering leaders)
You are someone who would like to mentor someone else in their professional career to help them grow their influence and impact.
More Comprehensive Reference Material- Mentor’s Guide – Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology
- Mentee and Protegee’s Guide – Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology
Benefits Of Mentoring
- You develop a network of enabling and trusting relationships.
- You give yourself an opportunity to reflect on your own practice.
- You get recognition for being a force multiplier.
How to Become a Mentor
- Volunteer To Be A Mentor: If your organization offers a formal program and is looking for mentors, this is the easiest path toward becoming a mentor. Throw your hat in the ring and reach out to the organizer.
- Offer To Mentor Someone: If you’ve already established a relationship with someone on your team or in your organization, you can reach out to them directly and their manager to offer yourself as a mentor.
Time Commitment
Being a mentor usually requires you to dedicate a minimum of 6 months to 2 years to your mentee. I’ve even seen 3 to 4 years of commitment. Weekly check-ins are usually a healthy way to see how each other is doing, handle any urgent questions and build up a level of trust and habit.
Start By Building Trust
The first meeting is crucial to the success of the ongoing mentoring relationship. For the mentor, it’s their job to be open to listening, come prepared, be honest, show commitment and most importantly build trust. At this point of the mentor/mentee relationship, the mentee has the most to lose and is the most vulnerable.
I can’t emphasize this enough: build trust first before moving forward on working on goals. If you don’t feel like there is enough commitment, keep on working on the personal relationship so that there is genuine care taken on both sides.
Emphasize Privacy
Keep everything confidential, even with the mentee’s manager. If you want to communicate and talk about the mentorship, take the time to ask for permission before disclosing any information to others. Do not even disclose the mentorship unless both parties are in agreement to do so.
Ask For Clarity Of Goals
Usually, a mentee wants to reach a career goal but is unsure about how they can get there. After trust has been built, ask them what they would like to get out of your time together.
Listen And Reflect On The Goals
Listen, don’t talk. Make no judgement on the goals themselves. Stop and listen. This is what I work on for myself. Then after the mentee is done talking, summarize back what you heard.
Your Job As A Mentor Is Simple But Difficult- Ask the hard questions for the mentee in order to get them to think about difficult subjects. (future blog post coming)
- Teach the framework to think about problems, instead of offering immediate solutions. (future blog post coming)
How To Mentor Software Engineers
With software engineers, start with explaining how the corporate game is played: there are players in the game (peers, product managers, managers, manager’s manager, VP, other more senior people), and there are rules of the game (HR policies on evaluation, software job family and level guides). You want your mentee to learn how the corporate game is played: what are the rules for evaluation? What are the rules for getting promoted. Who is in the room when they are evaluated?
Then, recommend a process of self-evaluation, where the engineer ranks themselves on how they are performing at their current level and at the next level. Software engineers are promoted when they operate at the next level. Have them print out their corporate job definition and spend 2-3 hours going through each of the skills and talk through why they rank themselves at that level.
I also recommend an exercise where they “project” into the future. Ask them to imagine themselves in two years: What are they doing more of, less of? Ask them about the people they are interacting with: How have those interactions shifted over the years? What are they spending their time doing? What will they enjoy doing in two years? What do they not want to be doing?
A Question Worth A Few Weeks Of Time: What Is Your Brand?
Ask this question to get them to explore how they want their co-workers to perceive them as at work. Ask: What do you want to be known for within your organization? Another way to approach this question is to ask them about the top three values they want to hold on to. Values are self-imposed rules that you follow even when nobody is watching.
Questions You Might Ask When Mentoring a Software Engineer
– What steps could you take to be a more effective communicator in meetings? For example, you could set goals like preparing ahead for all meetings, or speaking up or ask one question in every meeting. Don’t be afraid to take initiative in a meeting, take notes, or put ideas on the whiteboard.
– What could you do to focus on improving your own iteration speed? Then, how could you help others with theirs?
– How can you make your job obsolete? Can you automate, document, train someone else? This opens up opportunities for you to take on something bigger.
– How can you make your manager’s job super easy? What can you do so that your manager just can’t help but give you a raise, promote you to the next level, or give you a stretch assignment? 1:1’s can be quite productive if you are always asking thoughtful questions.
– What would it mean for you to take on 110% and stretch yourself? There are always breaks where you can work on multiple things at once.
– What can you do to heighten your love for your job? Can you look at it from different perspectives? Can you increase the quality of your work? Can you see your work as part of solving a bigger problem?
Feedback?
Email t@tonytam.org
Want More?
Check out Impactful Engineer at impactfulengineer.org
We are attempting to capture the stories and journeys of men and women who are making significant impact in the software industry. The purpose is to inspire young software engineers to see that are many paths for their careers and how they might move forward and eventually grow their impact wherever they work.
Our goal is to publish the same number of interviews with women and men because we care about diversity and inclusion in technology. -
a good overview of some of the use cases of blockchain Technology
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Mission
The mission of Impactful Engineer is to empower software engineers to build a meaningful and impactful lifelong career through interviews with leaders in the industry.
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Hedonic Treadmill
I’ve noticed that when I received really good news such as a pay raise, a promotion, really great results from a test (in college). My happiness level rises up for a very short time (less than 1 hour), then my emotion tapers off back to what it was before.
So let’s say my happiness level is usually at 5, on a scale of 1 to 10. After I get a promotion, I may get to level 9 of happiness for a very short period time. I would tell my love ones all about it. Then after 2 hours, my happiness drops back to a 5 or 6. And after 1 day, the promotion that I have been working towards for the last 3 years is a distant memory.
This could be the way my brain is wired. I tend to dwell on the negative, or what I could be doing better. But I recently learned that this is part of hedonic treadmill which “is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.”
Why Celebrate?
The reason to stop and celebrate is to build gratefulness into big wins, build up long lasting positive energy towards the next milestone or the next big promotion and most importantly, to be kind and loving to yourself.
Most people, including myself, beat ourselves up too much and not reward ourselves enough. We as parents take care of our children. As partners, we try to take care of our spouses. As children, we try to take care of our parents. And whatever energy we have, we lastly take care of ourselves.
For those of you who love to look forward and always looking to accomplish the next big promotion, my advice to celebrate is a great way to build in positive reinforcement in your own brain so that you will have the energy to tackle the next milestone which usually is twice as hard as your previous milestone. You need every bit of energy you can get.
Example
I try to remind myself to ride the high of the good news for at least a week. This works very well and helps me to be grateful for the good news and builds up my resilience for the bad news when it comes.
Here are some examples of how I practice this.
Raises
If I get a raise or bonus, I will celebrate 7 different ways over 7 days.
- Day 0: Of course I will set aside most of the bonus money in savings like any good husband and father.
- Day 1: I will share part of that bonus money with my daughter, a small but meaningful to her.
- Day 2: I set aside $200 for a new racket for badminton so that I will have a semi-permanent object that I use weekly to remind myself of my raise.
- Day 3: I will schedule a celebratory dinner with my entire family and tell them I’m treating them for dinner because of the bonus.
- Day 4: I may treat my wife and I to a massage
- Day 5: I will schedule a trip to a place with my wife that is my first choice, instead of having to think about someone else all the time. This is the time to celebrate this for myself!
- Day 6: I will do something simple, like going to my favorite donut shop or Thai restaurant and just eat the dish I love the most
- Day 7: I have a separate bank account for me to buy badminton gear, badminton membership and birdies. I would just deposit $200 in that account for future reward.
Other Milestones To Celebrate
You can use the 7 ways, 7 days to celebrate these other milestones
- Celebrate your birthday over 7 days for a birthweek!
- Celebrate your promotions, bonus and raises
- Celebrate a new job
Sharing With Others
With my daughter, my wife and people I mentor, I try to share this philosophy with them. For them to be kind to themselves and celebrate the big milestones.
You will find me asking them how they feel after a big accomplishment, reminding them for the next 7 days that they should celebrate even if it’s something small.
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How to collaborate with remote workers who are in another office or working from home.
https://blog.trello.com/6-mistakes-when-you-work-in-office-but-have-remote-team-members
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Facebook Doesn’t Like What It Sees When It Looks in the Mirror https://nyti.ms/2FLVBei
Turns out, an enlightened, socially engaged Facebook has a similar outlook as the amoral, audience-seeking Facebook. Each sees connecting online as key to the good life.
Tony Tam 