tag:world.hey.com,2005:/olly/feed
Olly Headey
2024-03-11T10:12:42Z
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/35816
2024-03-11T09:57:46Z
2024-03-11T10:12:42Z
Technical interviews in 2024
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<div>Technical interviews have long been a hot topic of conversation/head-scratching in tech circles, but candidates now have technology at their fingertips that was unimaginable a few years ago. </div><div><br>Apparently, things are <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/tech-job-interviews-out-of-control/">out of control</a>. </div><div><br>I’ve done hundreds of interviews over the years and my approach has always been fairly simple: a CV screen, technical test, follow-up code review call, then technical and non-technical interviews (that’s simple, right? 😅). We focused a lot of effort on reducing cognitive biases over the years, but the underlying process didn’t change that much. Considering the majority of people we hired at FreeAgent over the years were very good, I can assume this approach works pretty well.</div><div><br>The stage that has come under increased scrutiny recently is the technical test. Is it fair? Should candidates be paid? Is it now pointless since AI can produce wonderful solutions in seconds? </div><div><br>I think technical tests <em>are</em> fair, important, and not entirely pointless, even in 2024. You’re hiring technicians and you’ll be paying them handsomely, so you need to be able to get a measure of their technical competency before you make an offer. Would you hire an electrician without asking them to rewire a circuit, or a plumber without plugging a leak? Just because someone talks a good game doesn’t mean they’re actually any good on the job. You need more insight than that.</div><div><br>I also think it’s fine not to pay candidates for doing the test (it’s ~2–4 hours), but if you have the funds to do so then great – go for it! It might make your company more attractive to applicants. On the flip side I’ve heard tales of week-long test projects and extensive on-the-job pairing. If you’re doing this you should definitely pay, and pay well.</div><div><br>I’m a fan of <em>practical</em> technical tests. Not those awful <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/205266">How Would You Move Mount Fuji</a> riddles (I’m a decent programmer but I am genuinely appalling at these). Ask candidates to do something simple yet tangible. For many years at FreeAgent the test we asked candidates to complete involved parsing an FX data feed from a URL, then building a very basic UI to perform currency conversions on that data (Rails makes this a breeze!). It was an extraction from a basic library I built in FreeAgent and, despite being simple, the test proved to be a good one. </div><div><br>However, this was before the advent of LLMs.</div><div><br>While writing this article I tried prompting ChatGPT to write the code for the FreeAgent test (I found the instructions on the web 😳) and it did a really good job. It could easily create individual files, tests, ensure atomic commits, and even write the documentation. All this without expending much effort on the prompt. It would easily have passed the test! </div><div><br>So if anyone with rudimentary software dev skills can produce a more-than-passable test, surely this makes a coding test stage completely redundant?</div><div><br>I don’t think so. </div><div><br>If someone was completely winging it with AI and they had no idea what they were really doing, any follow-up call to discuss their implementation would be a train wreck. Imposters would be quickly unmasked. However, someone with a decent programming grounding could probably get through a review call too. They’d understand the output that the LLM produced, and they’d be able to reason about it. In this case, the test would demonstrate someone had the nous to use LLMs effectively and also talk confidently about software design decisions in person. You’d hope the following real-time technical interview would raise competency red flags, but it’s still a risk. Ultimately doing a technical test in this way is a futile exercise and does little to deter cheats.</div><div><br>Way back, we used to do the FreeAgent programming test in the office. Some candidates found this stressful, so we moved to take-home tests and it worked out fine. In this new AI age, reverting to an in-person (in-office or real-time video) test is probably a good idea. It’s what I would do if I actually had a job right now 😅 (wanna <a href="https://headey.net/consulting">hire me</a>?!). I’d pair an engineer with the candidate on a problem, such as fixing a bug, shipping a small feature change, or maybe I’d just use the same original test and get them to hack on that. You could allow candidates to use Google or even ChatGPT! Engineers should be using LLMs day-to-day just as everyone already uses Google, right? If engineers are not using them as part of the day-to-day, they’re missing out and probably taking too long to ship. Truth.</div><div><br>You might think there’s a downside to this approach, because it sounds like more time and effort for the hiring team. However, since you’re combining the test and the follow-up call, it could actually speed up your hiring process. You’d need to be more selective in inviting candidates to this stage, but that’s a good thing – all too often people are sent a take-home test when you’re not actually that sure about the candidate because it’s cheap for the employer, so why not. This is something of a dark/lazy pattern, so being more rigorous with your candidate selection at this stage will be beneficial on both sides. </div><div><br>It’s important to remember that no process is foolproof. At some point you’ll hire someone who doesn’t make the grade, for whatever reason. To minimise the impact of this, you need to make sure you have a rigorous onboarding, mentoring and evaluation process in place to identify issues and take action as early as possible. The last thing your business needs is taking 6 months (or longer) to figure out that someone isn’t good enough – that’s a massive hit to productivity and morale, and a big topic in itself which I’ll save for future articles.</div><div><br>Happy hiring!<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</figure></div><div><br><em>Photo by </em><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/a-car-is-parked-in-front-of-a-house-yEYravYsZkU"><em>Peter Thomas on Unsplash</em></a></div>
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Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/35095
2024-02-09T10:08:12Z
2024-02-09T10:08:12Z
Bye bye bros and bots
<div class="trix-content">
<div>I last joined Twitter in February 2007. I first joined when it launched in summer 2006, but I decided to delete my account soon after because I didn't understand it. I rejoined a few months later when other people were actually on there, and I've not left since.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--png">
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</figure><br><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">My first tweet from an old archive I discovered on my Mac. Not exactly earth-shattering, unlike those cinnamon buns in Golden Square 😋</em><br><br>I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Twitter ever since. A lot of love because of many good people, genuine lolz, the unmatched real time news feed (notably during Covidtimes), and because it was the place to be for so many interesting and insightful people across the globe. I have a lot of hates because, like any social media, it scores off the charts on toxicity and it's almost impossible to have a civil conversation regardless of how polite you are. Despite this, the pros tended to outweigh the cons and by (almost) never engaging in anything to avoid the mansplaining neckbeards, I stuck at it.<br><br>Not any more. <br><br>I'm out.<br><br>This isn’t an <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/14unbg9/comment/jr8xy06/"><del>Elmo</del></a> Elon thing, although his apparent <a href="https://www.vox.com/technology/2023/5/20/23730607/elon-musk-conspiracy-twitter-texas-shooting-bellingcat-taylor-lorenz-psyops">descent into conspiracies</a> and <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2022/11/28/on-twitter-elon-musk-finds-comfort-in-his-right-wing-filter-bubble_6005914_13.html">flirtation with right-wing deadbeats</a> certainly gets my goat. It’s because there are far fewer people on there from my network. It’s like being in a noisy bar with no mates, trying to make polite conversation but nobody is listening because they’re too busy shouting loudly about themselves. <br><br><a href="https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/open-source/2023/twitter-recommendation-algorithm">The algorithm</a> doesn't work for me either. My "For You" feed is full of tech bros, beef-gorging, testosterone-gulping indie hacker millionaires, VCs, dog gifs and one luddite account that drones on endlessly bemoaning modern architecture like we should still be trashing the earth to quarry marble to build churches. I know I can avoid this nonsense and just scroll who I follow, but discovery would be pretty welcome if it wasn't so broken. <br><br>Twitter is the complete opposite of LinkedIn, a place which was deeply uncool (well, ok, kinda still is) but has surged in popularity and remains remarkably low on the toxicity scale. LinkedIn is a “business time only” social network of course, so it’s not directly comparable. It’s essentially a CV/recruitment repository but this means people are on their best behaviour and use their real names. You do exchange toxicity for mild self-absorption but that's a tradeoff I'm willing to take. <br><br>On Twitter so many of my “followers” (urgh) <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/12/29/i-never-had-bot-problems-on-twitter-until-elon-musk-now-theyre-stalking-me/?sh=7fcd8c5f1637">seem to be bots</a>. I don’t think Elon solved this at all. Maybe he should introduce proper ID verification? He’ll need that <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/elon-musk-wants-your-entire-financial-life-on-x-by-2024/">for his bank</a> anyway, right? The anonymous troll community can just migrate to Reddit and 4Chan and still enjoy a happy troglodyte existence.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--png">
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</figure><br><br>I plan to hang around on LinkedIn now and again, as well as continuing to do <a href="https://instagram.com/ollyheadey">my photography thing on Instagram</a>, but I still struggle to know <a href="https://world.hey.com/olly/why-do-we-bother-with-social-media-44d3d37b">why I bother with it all</a>. <br><br>In time, I don’t think I will.</div>
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Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/34816
2024-01-30T08:32:01Z
2024-01-30T15:05:48Z
On Photography
<div class="trix-content">
<div>I have too many blogs.<br><br>This blog is for when I'm writing with my work hat on. I <a href="https://headey.net/writing">had another blog</a> that I used to write on before I got HEY World, but it's sorta defunct. It's an archive of stuff that maybe I'll just turn off one day soon, given that we have the <a href="https://web.archive.org/">Wayback Machine</a> if people really felt the need to dredge the bottom of my blogging barrel. <br> <br>So of course I created a new one.<br><br>For the past 3 or 4 years I've been taking photography a bit more seriously. This means I bought a better camera and subscribed to Lightroom, yes, but I've also been focusing on <em>learning</em>. Studying the greats, learning to read the light, composition theory, learning how to edit, all that. <a href="https://instagram.com/ollyheadey">I've definitely improved</a> but like most creative pursuits, it's an insurmountable lifelong journey. <br><br>I find something special in taking pictures for the love of it. I like the 'man vs machine' technical challenge of course, but nothing can beat the sheer enjoyment of happening to be in the right place at the right time when light, subject and shadow all converge.<br><br>I created a <a href="https://ollyheadey.com">portfolio website</a> a while back, and I've decided to add an email newsletter to it. One email per month, max. I've even given it a name: <strong>Captured</strong>. Since you kind people on this email list want to read my writes, I thought you might like to subscribe to the newsletter too. The content is very different, but diversity is good and maybe you'll like it (or know someone who would - nudge nudge). You don't even have to actually <em>read </em>it – you can just look at the pretty pictures. <br><br>I've just finishing writing issue #01 which I'm going to publish in a couple of days time, so, if you're keen, please head on over to <a href="https://ollyheadey.com/captured">https://ollyheadey.com/captured</a> to subscribe and I'll deliver the first edition fresh in your morning inbox later this week.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/34423
2024-01-16T09:20:14Z
2024-01-16T09:22:58Z
An old fashioned approach to employee wellbeing
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<div>Does your company run a “wellbeing week”? Do you run in-house relaxation classes, resilience training, or offer staff a free subscription to mindfulness apps?<br><br>Save your time. And your money. <br><br><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/irj.12418">A new study</a> from William J. Fleming at the University of Oxford’s <a href="https://wellbeing.hmc.ox.ac.uk/">Wellbeing Research Centre</a> has found little evidence that support any of these benefits. Fleming concludes: <br><br></div><blockquote><em>The results in this article pose a challenge to the popularity and legitimacy of individual- level mental well-being interventions like mindfulness, resilience and stress management, relaxation classes and well-being apps. I find little evidence in support of any benefits from these interventions with even some small indication of harm that would confirm fears from critics (e.g., Frayne, 2019; Lovejoy et al., 2021).</em></blockquote><div><br>This doesn't surprise me. Jobs are stressful because of long hours, fragmented schedules chock-full of pointless meetings leaving you no time to actually think, incomprehensible and unfair performance evaluations, asshat managers and, of course, poor pay.<br><br>No amount of wellbeing assistance is going to solve these core problems. It's treating the symptom not the cause. <br><br>People want to work for companies that do things right. People want to feel like they can contribute and make a difference. People want to have the agency to make decisions, however small. People want a culturally healthy workplace, with leaders who listen to staff and make improvements. People want to do a good day's work and feel they've accomplished something. People want to work with colleagues who are kind, who share the same sense of commitment and desire to produce great work. People want to go home (or leave the home office) without feeling like they've spent the day watching the clock or being ground down by corporate jobsworths (or both).<br><br>We've accepted that shiny offices with Playstations, bean bags and scatter cushions offer little benefit. There's nothing wrong with shiny office of course (I'm a big fan, if you can afford them) but they won't create a strong foundational workplace culture. If you haven't got your house in order, you're just painting over the cracks.<br><br>There's an interesting point at the end of the study:<br><br></div><blockquote><em>Employee volunteering opportunities do offer one possible exception, but the estimated effects are small</em></blockquote><div><br>Small, sure, but worthwhile nonetheless. As well as the obvious benefit it brings the organisation you're helping, volunteering days bring your people together away from the day job. The importance of this can't be overestimated. It's hard to make connections at work, even when you're racked together in an office. Getting your people together, even in small groups on a volunteering day, allows social bonds to form away from the gruesome corporate hierarchy in a way that no office party can ever do. If you're all remote, this is going to be more of a challenge, but you can tackle the social bonding problem <a href="https://basecamp.com/organizing-a-meet-up">by getting your people together semi-regularly</a>. Maybe you could throw in some volunteering time at your next meet-up?<br> <br>None of this is new is it? It's largely common sense. Having fair and transparent policies, doing right by people, trusting them with agency and asking them to <a href="https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/work-hard-be-nice-to-people-anthony-burrill/299959?ean=9780753558225">work hard and be nice to people</a>. It's the corporate equivalent of eating your greens and going easy on the booze and cake. You can sprinkle as many goji berries and flaxseeds onto your <a href="https://ichscotland.org/wiki/fish-supper">fish supper</a> as you like but it's not going to make you healthy. <br><br>Reduce your corporate cholesterol. <br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/33819
2023-12-27T09:41:32Z
2023-12-27T22:12:18Z
2023 and all that
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<div>Another year gone. I’m not going to bore you to death with a dreary list of accomplishments. No, instead I’m going to bore you to death with lists of music and films and culture stuff that I liked in 2023. </div><div><strong><br>Music<br></strong><br></div><div>I love albums. <em>Long players</em>. The Spotify robots confirmed this. <br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpeg">
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</figure></div><div><br>There have been some great ones. I speed-listened to lots of albums that all the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/dec/05/the-50-best-albums-of-2023">best of lists</a> fawned over and I didn’t like a lot of them. Here are the ones that I absolutely loved:<br><br></div><ul><li>Ragz Originale – BARE SUGAR</li><li>Barry Can’t Swim – When Will We Land?</li><li>Matthew Halsall – An Ever Changing View</li><li>Slowdive – everything is alive</li><li>Raye – My 21st Century Blues</li><li>Josef – Permanent Damage</li><li>Not3s – Son of the Soil</li><li>Art School Girlfriend – Soft Landing</li><li>Billie Marten – Drop Cherries</li></ul><div><br>The Ragz Originale album is incredible. I only discovered it by accident which is the best way. I was sat in a hotel room in Amsterdam looking at what gigs were on the following night. PJ Harvey was sold out but there were tickets available for Ragz, who I’d never heard of. I listened to his album on Spotify and was utterly transfixed. I put it on repeat several times, then booked tickets to the gig which despite the weird <a href="https://www.melkweg.nl/en/">half-seated venue</a> was bouncing.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpeg">
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</figure></div><div><br>I also listened to Fred Again’s Actual Life 3 (and the complementary <a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/4S8ReXNJUYd3INog1JNlBJ?si=IANzoUA1Tca_mbm3Rijv4w">Piano EP</a> which is mesmerising) a LOT. You could say I’m completely obsessed with Fred. His <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PzMetFFVa0">sunset Glastonbury performance</a> was something truly special and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/10/1167158933/fred-again-tiny-desk-concert">his Tiny Desk performance</a> was out of this world. </div><div><br>Here’s <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4v0Lys27AGZSRikIITkYJq?si=28c5c447f39d4425">a playlist of some 2023 tracks that I liked</a> if you're interested.</div><div><strong><br>Gigs<br></strong><br></div><div>Edinburgh isn’t at a Glasgow-level of gig nirvana but it’s getting better. The first two gigs on this list were leagues ahead of the others (notably neither in Edinburgh 😅). <br><br></div><ul><li>Chvrches, Glasgow Barrowland.</li><li>Ragz Originale, Melkweg, Amsterdam</li><li>Billy Marten, Summerhall, Edinburgh</li><li>Roy Ayers, Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh</li><li>Cinematic Orchestra, The Queens Hall, Edinburgh</li><li>Tim Minchin, The Queens Hall, Edinburgh</li><li>Josef, The Queens Hall, Edinburgh</li></ul><div><strong><br>Film and TV</strong></div><div><br>Not too many trips to the flicks but I saw some of the big ones. I’d probably pick <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13238346/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_past%2520live">Past Lives</a> as my favourite. A total gem of a movie.</div><div><br>As for TV, nothing came close to Season 2 of The Bear. The back to back ‘Fishes’ and ‘Forks’ episodes were outstanding – small wonder they get a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26230386/?ref_=tt_eps_top">near</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt26230388/?ref_=tt_eps_top">perfect</a> score on IMDB.<br><br></div><ul><li>Past Lives</li><li>The Bear</li><li>Beef</li><li>Lessons in Chemistry</li><li>Killers of the Flower Moon</li><li>Stop Making Sense (saw this on IMAX – wow 🤩)</li><li>Daisy Jones and the Six</li><li>Barbenheimer</li><li>The Fabelmans</li><li>Air</li><li>Triangle of Sadness</li><li>Fleishman is in Trouble</li></ul><div><strong><br>Books</strong> <br><br>A distinct lack of reading this year. Must. Do. Better. Still, of those I read here are a few that I enjoyed.<br><br></div><ul><li>Elon Musk – Walter Isaacson</li><li>Lessons in Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus</li><li>Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro</li><li>A Crooked Tree – Una Mannion</li><li>Watermark – Joseph Brodsky</li><li>Fire Rush – Jaqueline Crooks</li></ul><div><br>What are your recommendations? Hit me up!</div><div><br></div>
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Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/33712
2023-12-22T07:48:09Z
2023-12-22T07:48:09Z
Simple thinking
<div class="trix-content">
<div>Here’s a novel take away. <a href="https://www.coinbase.com/blog/delete-week-announcement">A week of deletion</a>. <br><br>Subtraction. <br><br>Simplification. <br><br>Most companies get more complicated over time. This is why they slow down and start to fear change. This is how they lose their best people and why customers end up going elsewhere. <br><br>Complexity is exhausting. <br><br>Downing tools for a “Delete Week” is a good start, but striving for simplicity is more of a mindset you need to instil. <br><br>Before I left FreeAgent <a href="https://engineering.freeagent.com/2021/05/14/engineering-principles-at-freeagent/">I wrote some engineering principles</a> and the first one was “Keep it simple”. It was probably the only one we needed as the others were based on simple thinking. <br><br>Whether you try a delete week or not, you should certainly ask yourself the question of what you would discard given the chance. <br><br>What gets in the way? What could you do without?<br><br>Then just delete something anyway. <br><br>I’d start by removing some of those dreaded recurring meetings. <strong>Stop interrupting people</strong>. Especially creatives like programmers (yes programmers are creatives, get over it!) and designers, but pretty much everyone at some level. <br><br>These meetings are rarely effective. You won’t miss them, and you can always meet when you <em>need</em> to which definitely won’t be every Tuesday at 10:30 sharp, forever. <br><br>Free up eveyone’s calendar for creative thought and those wonderful long and uninterrupted periods of deep work. <br><br>This is where the magic happens. <br><br>The beatify of simplifying, the sheer <a href="https://konmari.com/about-the-konmari-method">Kondoesque</a> joy of elimination and having fewer things in your face is addictive. It’s addictive because it feels good and because it works. You’ll have more energy and more time which leads to more ideas and more progress. <br><br>Less is more. Keep it simple. Go delete something.<br><br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/33371
2023-12-12T10:52:26Z
2023-12-12T10:59:24Z
Carpe diem (ad carpe futurum)
<div class="trix-content">
<div>I’ve been in observation mode recently, refining my social networks. Scrolling the feeds, pulling the weeds. My Twitter (f’u X) and LinkedIn feeds are worky, and I’m connected to lots of founder types, both the VC hunter gatherers and the indie bootstrappers. From this perspective 2023 seems to have been all about <em>the grind</em>, with less "hustle" about. I’m not really sure what this means. Maybe it’s just words, or maybe people are having to, like, <em>work</em> for their dollaroonies now. <br><br>One observation is seeing the same sentiments shared and the same questions being asked, over and again. "How do I manage people?", "How do I build a high performing team?", "Why you should give people feedback", "5 hacks to achieve super-productivity". The answers do evolve, but they’re still kinda just the same. It’s all just <a href="https://youtu.be/yzLT6_TQmq8?si=VqzJnAUOK-w-l1rl">a little bit of history repeating</a>. <br><br>I was totally in grind mode for years, maybe a decade. I was on a steep learning curve for scaling up teams, how to be less of a shit manager, how to wrangle multiple scores of engineers. I'd spend my days focusing on how to keep everyone, but generally not myself, happy. I took these things seriously while being acutely aware of the need to avoid the corporate process sinkhole. I believed in all this through and through, and why not because it’s not <em>so</em> bad and it all kinda works, right? But on what level? Does it actually work <em>for you</em>? <br><br>I can look back through the reflective lens of hindsight. Having gone full circle from helping <a href="https://headey.net/a-startup-story-the-freeagent-years-2007-2021">build a chunky tech scale up</a>, to working for the <a href="https://basecamp.com">SaaS O.G</a>, to hurtling back to Obscurity Street, Nowheresville, all on my lonesome, I’ve finally understood a few things about what gets me up in the morning and what gets my goat. Here’s a few. Take what you like and if you make it to the end, thanks for listening.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure><br><br>Building a thing for the sake of building a thing is fun but it’s no way to build a thing. You have to really need or absolutely <em>love</em> that thing you’re building or the problem it’s trying to solve. Without that, your purpose and self-worth is flaccid at best, surely? There will be people out there who are deeply passionate about all things, say, MarTech and they genuinely believe they’re not <a href="https://youtu.be/9h9wStdPkQY?si=aaHEf_6S6-5cVJF0">ruiners of all things good</a> with their latest ephemeral content astroturfing app. But they’re misguided.<br><br>Purpose is paramount.<br><br>The VC-backed rocket ship concept isn’t for me, not any more. It definitely was once and I have no regrets. In fact the dreamer in me still kinda likes the whole charade of it all – the apparent glamour, the jetsetting, making all those big calls with the big boys for those big bucks. Of course, like most things online, the reality is quite the opposite. A few token rocket ship cashtronauts will hit the jackpot but everyone else will end up lost, swathed in endless meetings and performance reviews and wellbeing weeks, and <em>it will suck the creative life out of them to the point where they’ve forgotten how to dream</em>. Caveat emptor, for real.<br><br>Creating is paramount. <br><br>Some people say “<a href="https://blog.codinghorror.com/yes-but-what-have-you-done/">always be shipping</a>” and there’s truth in that, but you could be shipping crates of mince. Create something beautiful or meaningful, don't crate offal. <br><br>Advanced AI in the wrong hands is a catastrophe waiting to happen, but right now, in tech, whether you’re standing on the shoulders of giants to push the boundaries of what’s possible with tech-based products, or using it to 10x your day-to-day productivity, <strong>AI is your best friend</strong>. If a problem shared with a human is a problem halved, a problem shared with an LLM is a problem <em>decimated</em>. This is how we progress.<br><br>I’ve found days spent coding without distraction, with a sense of purpose and with <em>reasonable</em> urgency (not <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/11/elon-musk-moved-twitter-servers-himself-in-the-night-new-biography-details-his-maniacal-sense-of-urgency.html">maniacal, Elmo</a>) to be immensely fulfilling. Long expanses of focus and solitude can produce the best work. I have become more aware of my tendency to be slightly obsessive when trying to solve the tricker problems though, deep in the darkest depths of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)">the zone</a>. This can be quite suffocating and I’m trying to learn how to come up for air sooner. Breathe, dammit! I think I used to be better at this, but my memory is sketchier these days so maybe I wasn’t. <br><br>Truth be told I’ve had a love/hate relationship with coding over the 28 (!) years since I started my first proper job, for far too many reasons to dwell on here, but I’ve ended up in a happy place. Much of this has to do with Ruby, <a href="https://rubyonrails.org">Rails</a> and their communities. They're the most wonderful of gifts (you should watch <a href="https://youtu.be/HDKUEXBF3B4?feature=shared">Ruby on Rails: The Documentary</a> by the way, to help understand). Further to this, obstinately focusing on mastering these tools and ignoring virtually everything else has been immensely satisfying. For me, ignoring the hype and <a href="https://hiutdenim.medium.com/the-do-one-thing-well-list-2023-eaa1024602d9">doing one thing well</a> is the real secret sauce to programming contentment and productivity. <br><br>The modernists believed less is more and Picasso said art is the elimination of the unnecessary. I’d go further and say <em>contentment</em> is the elimination of the unnecessary. Unnecessary worry, unnecessary <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html">stuff</a>, unnecessary technologies, unnecessary distractions, unnecessary opinions. <br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure><br><br>My ongoing detachment from the grind and the hustle started off being difficult (turns out it requires the patience I tend to lack) but has ended up being cathartic. Rediscovering <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/10/the-creative-act-a-way-of-being-by-rick-rubin-review-thoughts-of-the-bearded-beat-master">the joy of creating</a>, finding something to create that you believe in (however small and insignificant), working with people who have talents that inspire you, applying skills you’ve spent decades learning and finally learned to enjoy using. The thrill of ideas. That warm sense of anticipation for what could be, the challenge of putting something into practice, and that warm glow of satisfaction that comes from accomplishment even though it's rarely easy to get there. All of this, it's wonderful thing.<br><br></div><div>Keep thinking. Stay creative. </div><div><br><br><br></div><div><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Photos ©️ me</em></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/32413
2023-11-07T13:43:46Z
2023-11-07T13:48:11Z
Rails is niche. Good!
<div class="trix-content">
<div><a href="https://israilsdead.com/">Is Rails dead</a>? Is it on death’s door, <a href="https://dev.to/poudyal_rabin/ruby-on-rails-will-be-dead-soon-pab">terminally ill</a> or being slowly asphyxiated by Python?<br><br></div><div>No. It’s just niche.<br><br>Rails is not cool, it’s not the zeitgeist. Not at the moment. Maybe never again. Rails had its moment back in the noughts when it was fresh and an undeniable game-changer. It was the platform that <a href="https://github.com">some</a> <a href="https://shopify.com">enormous</a> <a href="https://airbnb.com">companies</a> were built on and people loved it. They still do. <br><br></div><div>Trends come and go, especially in tech, but you’ll notice the good things tend to stick around. They’re just not so hot any more. Vinyl was first proclaimed dead in the late 80s when CDs got popular. Sales plummeted but there was still a thriving underground scene. Plenty of people had turntables and they didn’t all dump their record collections on the Oxfam doorstep. The dance music scene blew up in the early 90s and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDJ">CDJs</a> didn’t exist so it was all about 12” vinyl, white labels, test pressings and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technics_SL-1200">Technics 1200s</a> (🫶). If your world revolved around Woolworths and HMV you might have thought vinyl was extinct, but it wasn’t. It was thriving under the radar.</div><div><br>In the 2000s the iPod, iPhone and Spotify did the same damage to CDs, which left dusty old vinyl two generations of tech behind, even closer to death’s door. DJs started to go digital because the new tech was incredible and traditional vinyl record shops were virtually non-existent. Then the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Barley">hipsters landed</a>, retro was cool, the ‘80s were back, and vinyl became popular again. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_revival">vinyl revival</a>. Why?<br><br></div><div>There was a counterculture element at play, no doubt, but vinyl offers a different way of listening to music. Some might say more intentional. There are no “Top Tracks”, no playlists, no AI. You can’t fast forward and skipping is annoying, so you have to sit there and, you know, <em>listen</em>. People forgot (or were too young to remember) how enjoyable that could be and they rediscovered it. It's not for everyone, only a minority, which makes it a niche. People who are into it absolutely love it. This is great!</div><div><br>Rails isn’t for everyone either, and it offers a different way of building products. When you decide to build something in Rails you’re embracing a different way of working. You’re going to build a <a href="https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-majestic-monolith/">majestic monolith</a>. You’re going to send <a href="https://hotwired.dev/">HTML over the wire</a>. That’s what’s on <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/doctrine">the menu.</a> You’re choosing to say fuck microservices, fuck JSON, fuck GraphQL. You’re saying get all those confusing, shape-shifting tech choices out of my face and just let me <em>build</em> dammit. <br><br>One day your product might be successful beyond your wildest dreams. You’ll have to hire 200 engineers and then you’ll realise you have to split your front- and back-ends. You’ll need satellite services, maybe even microservices. You’ll end up down this path and then you'll have <em>to eat your words</em>.<br><br>Sure. While you’re having your cake and eating it because you’ll have already won. Thanks Rails!<br><br>Rails is not for everyone, but it's not dead. It's just a niche. People who are into it absolutely love it. This is great!<br><br></div><div>Embracing a niche means being part of a small, healthy, creative community. Like Rails, or digging in the vinyl crates, or <a href="https://doingfilmthings.tumblr.com/">medium format film photography</a>. You get to feel a warm glow with people in the know. These small communities understand that to keep them alive you need to be kind to each other, keep contributing, and keep spreading the good word to get new people involved. It takes effort but you do it for the love of it because you know it's a special thing. <br><br></div><div>Monocultures are a total drag. Embrace those niches and keep them thriving under the radar. <br><br></div><div> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure> <em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">You can listen to some of my vinyl mixes from the 90s if you like over at </em><a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/ollyh/"><em>https://www.mixcloud.com/ollyh</em></a><em> </em>😊🕺</div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/32057
2023-10-24T13:38:21Z
2023-10-24T13:51:14Z
Have high expectations
<div class="trix-content">
<div>The most common complaint I hear from founders/leaders in business is the number of people problems they have on their plate. It’s draining, distracting and demotivating. <br><br>We invest so much time and energy trying to turn these situations around, yet they’re often only resolved when somebody leaves either by choice or by, er, strong encouragement. And this typically happens waaaaaay too late in the day. Often measured in years.<br><br>At some level this is kinda just life in business, but you can help yourself, big time, in two ways:<br><br></div><ul><li>Document your company values, sure, but more importantly define <a href="https://headey.net/why-your-business-needs-a-progression-framework">clear expectations for each role and level</a> in the business. These should cover skills, communication and engagement as a baseline. They should make clear what is expected of someone, day in day out, but also what one needs to accomplish in order to progress to the next level. You’ll need to talk to people 1-1 about their progression frequently. There should be no doubt, and you should be aligned on either side. </li></ul><div><br></div><ul><li>Adapt your hiring process to specifically score and filter on these values and expectations. For example, if you find someone who is technically gifted beyond your wildest dreams but they seem to lack important traits in communication or engagement, <em>don’t ignore these red flags</em>. Filter on them, and be strict. You don't need to rush because <a href="https://world.hey.com/olly/stop-hiring-too-many-people-79babfaf">you need fewer people than you think</a>. </li></ul><div><br></div><div>A happy and productive team is one not beset with grievance and back-channel tittle tattle. Gripes in everyday life are normal, of course, just make sure you tackle them without delay through <a href="https://headey.net/why-you-need-to-run-all-hands-meetings">clear communication</a>, frequent 1-1s and <a href="https://www.radicalcandor.com/">candid feedback</a> using your values and expectations as your guide. <br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure><br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/31669
2023-10-05T22:23:06Z
2023-10-05T22:31:44Z
Lost at sea
<div class="trix-content">
<blockquote><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">You know where you came from<br>You know where you're going<br>And you know where you belong<br><br>— The Smiths, These Things Take Time</em></blockquote><div><br>Leaving FreeAgent was a natural progression. The company was stable, I’d done a good job and I didn’t feel there was much left for me to achieve. Great people with youth and energy were eager to move on up. Time to go.<br><br></div><div>I got recruited by 37signals soon after leaving FreeAgent so I didn’t have time to dwell. I had a big new challenge and I dove right in. There was a lot to learn, and I gave it pretty much everything I had, full gas. I think I did pretty good. I got positive feedback from above and below. Then I decided to call it a day, abruptly and somewhat impulsively which isn’t really like me, truth be told. Looking back it seems rather rash, but the planned company/team growth that I was there to help with didn’t really materialise and I was increasingly feeling like a spare part as I ticked things off my list while sufficient new challenges were not being added to it. It’s a damn shame as it’s the best company I’ve ever worked for. Other than my own, which was better, obvs 😆<br><br></div><div>I’ve done a lot of dwelling over the past few months and I’ve been up and down and back around several times. It’s odd, all these peaks and troughs, the what ifs and what nexts. It’s hard to explain, but I'm game.<br><br></div><div>Imagine you’ve been navigating your sturdy boat for years with a band of trusted sailors. You’ve become a team with hardened sea legs. You’ve hit choppy waters, sprung leaks, faced shark attacks, but it’s ok – you work it, figure it out between you, and end up in calmer waters, a lot more experienced and confident to face the next stormy whitewater. Then you decide to leave that steady ship on an exciting transfer to someone else’s superyacht. You’re no longer an executive officer, probably not even a first officer, but somewhere above a deckhand. Maybe a second officer, if that’s a thing. You enjoy your time, learn a tonne, make lovely new friends, but before you get <em>too</em> used to those all-expenses-paid trips to glamorous destinations around the world you make a snap decision to jump ship.<br><br></div><div>It’s a thrill, but when you’re deep in the drink starting to feel a shiver, you realise that the azure water ain’t quite as inviting as it looked from the deck. Then you find yourself lost at sea.<br><br></div><div>You’re fortunate and unlikely to drown, so do you try and risk a goliath swim ashore that you know will be exhausting, or do you twinkle-smile and wave at passing ships to see if one will pull you aboard? A tempting and easy(ish) option perhaps, but potentially unfulfilling. If you don’t do either, chances are you’ll end up flapping and splashing around, rudderless, waiting for some kind soul to drag you out and slap you about the face with a big trout until you come to your senses.<br><br></div><div>That's what it's like. You get the feeling I’m overthinking this? 😅<br><br></div><div>I don’t know many founders who’ve worn similar shoes as me, so maybe this flux is normal. Or maybe it’s late onset of a mid-life crisis? Or both! Not many people write about these experiences (post-acquisition founder exploits, not mid-life crises) which is a shame as it would be really therapeutic to read. Instead I resort to getting therapy from writing nonsense like this. Sorry, internet.<br><br></div><div>At the end of the day, things just take time. Patience is required (damn). It’s just another “problem” that you’ve gotta work like you did in those choppy waters back in the day. You'll get there. It was never going to be easy, but I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that navigating the seas is a whole lot better with shipmates than it is on a solo crossing. </div><div><br>Anyone got a trout?<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpeg">
<a download="IMG_0119.jpeg" title="Download IMG_0119.jpeg" data-click-proxy-target="lightbox_link_blob_1385615287" href="https://world.hey.com/olly/cb44752b/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHNLd2UzejVaUyIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--8aea16816b3a44818c27499685153cec7c8e50bd/IMG_0119.jpeg?disposition=attachment">
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</a>
</figure><br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/31607
2023-10-03T15:26:49Z
2023-10-03T15:51:47Z
Building apps for fun or (probably not) profit
<div class="trix-content">
<div>If I think back all those years (decades 😳) when we were building the first beta of FreeAgent, foggy memory-bank notwithstanding, there was a lot to get excited about in the day-to-day. Writing code and building the product was great fun for the most part, setting up infrastructure a bit less so (weak *nix skillz) but super-rewarding when things worked. Then there were the times coming up with marketing copy, or doing some customer support, or even trying your hand at sales (rather badly) at networking events… happy days!<br><br></div><div>Building is the fun part.</div><div><br></div><div>What’s interesting is that as an employed software designer or developer, when your job is literally to do the building, every day should be super-enjoyable, but sometimes they're not. This is because you’re not building apps for fun, you’re building for profit. You might end up having stressful deadlines with a product manager on your case, customers could be moaning about your latest "outrageous" UI change, or obscure exceptions could be machine-gunning your inbox. Or all of these, sometimes all at once. Now it’s not exactly a hardship getting paid daft money to sit in a warm comfortable office (which is probably in your warm comfortable home) and suck up the nags, but everything is relative so it often seems like a chore and you start to daydream of other places where the grass looks so much greener.<br><br></div><div>At FreeAgent we ran <a href="https://www.freeagent.com/blog/hack-day-round-up/">Hack Days</a> twice a year which gave everyone two days away from their projects to hack on anything they pleased. Originally <a href="https://engineering.freeagent.com/2012/08/20/hack-week-2-0-round-up/">this was a whole week</a>, but that felt a bit much so we ended up making them two days which is a perfect balance of time and pressure. It’s a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busman%27s_Holiday">busman’s holiday</a> but people generally loved it. Two days to build apps for fun while getting paid! What’s not to like? You get to do the best bits of your job without any of those irritating things like fixing bugs, OKR scoring or product prioritisation meetings putting a downer on everything.<br><br></div><div>For the past month or two, in-between major downpours of life admin that seem to occur when you don’t have an official job, I’ve basically been doing my own Hack Month. I sat down on day one with a vague idea of something to build, then pressed ahead to see what would happen. I haven’t used this time to learn new-fangled technology, I much prefer to slouch in my Ruby on Rails onesie and apply what I know (and enjoy) the most. I've also been using ChatGPT as my personal code servant which has been remarkably helpful (more about that in a future blog post). It’s been really enjoyable, a trip down programmer memory lane with boundless creative twists. <br><br></div><div>Trouble is, everything good comes to an end. <br><br>This isn't bad per se – things wouldn’t be special otherwise, everything would just be normal and boring – it's just the next stage in the journey. With side projects, after a certain period of time lethargy creeps in. You get bored, become distracted, then you wonder why you’re wasting your limited and valuable time on such a fruitless task. If you manage to avoid chucking everything away at this point, you’ll need to make a decision about whether what you’re doing has legs. Is it a side project, or just a daft hack? Or are you going to take it a bit more seriously, cast the line out and see if anything bites?<br><br></div><div>This is where I find myself today. I’ve built a thing which took 4 or 5 weeks total dev time (yes I time-tracked it in <a href="http://fre.ag/42fkab5r">FreeAgent</a> because I am <em>that guy</em>), and I’ve really enjoyed it. I’ve even hooked a little bait and tested the waters with a few very kind volunteers. I think what I’ve made is <em>okay</em> and I kinda like using it day-to-day (even though I’m sat here on my lonesome, journalling as if I’m working in a team of 100 which is weird to say the least 😅), but should I put it out there, or put it on the shelf and move onto building next thing which will, of course, be far more fun? Or maybe I could do both? <a href="https://smallbets.co/">Small bets</a> are all the rage right now.<br><br></div><div>I've called the app I've built <a href="https://teamlight.net/">Teamlight</a>. It helps you get to know your team, both personally and professionally, which (my theory goes) makes your team happier and more productive. It’s simple to use, and it sits somewhere between your flaccid HR system and the cacophony of Slack. It shines a light on your great people and their great work, two things that get lost in most enterprisey systems and workflows despite them being the most valuable things you should care about!<br><br>So if you’ve been wondering who Martin (or is it Marvin?) in Accounts is, Teamlight can help. If you want to know what Marina in Engineering has been up to for the last couple of weeks, Teamlight can help. If you’ve been sunning yourself in Lanzarote for the past fortnight and want to catch up with everything that’s been happening in only 10 minutes over your morning coffee, Teamlight can help. It’s currently an employee directory / team journalling Q&A mash-up. An AI-free celebration of the power of regular, thoughtful writing. It looks like this:<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--png">
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</a>
</figure></div><div>It’s very much a bare-bones MVP so there’s a lot of polish that <em>could</em> be applied to the current app, and a very long list of new things it could do (Slack integration, eNPS, polls, AI summaries are obvious extensions). Without some positive reinforcement though, it’s staying as it is. So help me decide! Roll the dice and double down, or park the daft thing and move onto the next (I have a long list 😆)? If you’re involved in running a business, or even just a team or department within a larger org, I’d be keen to hear what you think of the premise. Could it solve a problem you have with visibility about who's who and what they do? Let me know. If it sounds ridiculous and you're utterly perplexed as to why someone would build a worse version of Geekbot, let's chat. If you're reallly enthusiastic and want to actually try it, you can but I’ll need to invite you – so <a href="mailto:olly@hey.com">email me</a> or <a href="https://teamlight.net/#waitlist">signup to the waitlist</a> on the website and I can do the rest. <br><br>Help me escape this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle">trough of disillusionment</a> one way or another. You're my only hope!<br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/30846
2023-08-22T15:29:26Z
2023-08-22T16:05:26Z
Building something new
<div class="trix-content">
<div>It's been over three months <a href="https://world.hey.com/olly/venturing-into-the-unknown-again-fa1ea1bc">since I left 37signals</a> on a bit of a whim. When I left I had an emerging plan with someone to build something new, but as it turned out I had nagging doubts and couldn't get excited enough about the opportunity so it quickly fizzled. A bit of a shame, but them's the breaks. I decided to take the summer off instead and do not very much other than go on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17939838878704426/">an adventure across Italy</a>. Would recommend. <br><br>I've daydreamed about creating something new since <a href="https://headey.net/a-startup-story-the-freeagent-years-2007-2021">before I left FreeAgent</a>. Not just hacking together an app like the <a href="https://www.producthunt.com/products/blogline">fun side project</a> I did during Covidtimes (RIP Blogline ⚰️), but building an app into a <em>business</em>. Around June time I had a vague idea for something I could build that was small and fun, so I just started building it. No plan, little thought about where it would or could go, just build and see where it lands. Maybe this is bad advice, but I think this is a viable approach. It's the equivalent of starting a novel without a plot, but as Stephen King says in On Writing, <strong>plot doesn't matter</strong>:<br><br></div><blockquote><em>I don’t take notes; I don’t outline, I don’t do anything like that. I just flail away at the goddamn thing.</em></blockquote><div> <br>So with my "What If" question in mind, I started flailing away on my goddamn thing and actually, after about 3 work weeks of effort (spread over 3 months!) things have started to take shape. With a few more weeks of cranking I should be able to have a viable (if bare bones) product in the hands of a few lucky/unfortunate <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_and_medium-sized_enterprises">SMEs</a> for a bit of testing. This has inevitably led to thinking about where I should take it after that. What path should I choose, and do I even want any of this at all? <br><br>In the startup tech world right now there seem to be two distinct camps: the classic VC-backed rocket ship camp, and the "build in public" bootstrapper camp. Both camps ultimately want the same thing – a popular product that brings in cash money – but the founder journeys are <em>very</em> different. The LinkedIn and X (😳) algorithms are relentless in serving me views and hot takes from both sides, and the more takes I read (which is too many, I know, but I can't help myself) the more averse to the venture-backed approach I've become. Bootstrapping on the other hand, keeping things simple and more nimble, seems far more appealing. <br><br>It's a whopping cliché to say that <a href="https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/31/life-journey/">life is a journey and not a destination</a>, but it's true in startupland. Starting FreeAgent my early 30s was a brilliant journey. I was out of the dismal rat run, and working remotely building something I believed in. It was a wonderful, liberating feeling. Making decisions, chatting to customers, raising money from investors, hiring employees... every day was different and there was so much to learn! Quite the change from building substandard web apps with third-choice frameworks for stiff financial institutions. Of course there were plenty of shitty times, and while the destination (which was, because of the VC train, pretty much always "flog it" and hopefully make a few quid) was something to look forward to, but it was a proper <em>lived experience</em>, and one that doesn't come along that often. You have to seize these when you get the chance IMO. <br> <br>Since that particular journey has ended, taking another one along the same lines is pretty unappealing. The thought of creating pitch decks with over-optimistic growth projections and taking dozens of calls to hear my ideas resoundingly shitpanned sounds like a miserable experience. I'm well aware that there's a very large chance that any idea I have won't be remotely successful, but I'd prefer to let the public decide, thanks. Even if VCs loved my ideas and coughed up the dough, the burden of expectation with half a million venture dollars in the bank would be weighing me down and stressing me out big time. Plus I have no desire to relive the past, that's been and gone. I want to see new places and have new experiences. That said, I'd definitely recommend VC to new entrepreneurs so don't let me put you off. It will be a wild ride and you'll love it, win or lose! 😅 <br><br>I prefer a calmer journey right now. Cruise ship age (nope!) is fast approaching so I want a more comfortable ride rather than be strapped to a surfboard on 40ft waves. The goal is to bootstrap a profitable <a href="https://www.freeagent.com/glossary/micro-business/">microbiz</a> with few overheads, not convince people I can <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/3b4481b4-d5ca-4abc-a1a6-878c133f52a5">build a rocket ship</a>. To build a fairly boring <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business-to-business">B2B</a> SaaS that's something that I want to use (or have needed in the past) and can <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food">dogfood</a> every day. <a href="https://mailchimp.com/courier/article/building-in-public-social-media/">Building in public</a> doesn't come naturally for me though, mainly because I'm a reserved Englishman and the thought of having to big myself up in public is horrifying. However, I'm happy to write about it now and again to the few subscribers of this underwhelming periodical, if that counts. <br><br>Of course it's only the <a href="https://www.inc.com/john-eades/3-unavoidable-and-necessary-stages-of-an-entrepreneurs-journey.html"><em>honeymoon stage</em></a> of the journey, but there are a few things that have stood out to me already. Firstly, coding for the joy of it. Well, the <em>occasional</em> joy of coding that comes after emerging victorious from periods of immense frustration. I have far fewer programming skills than the many talented people I've worked with over the years, but I still love the building, the endless learning, and seeing the creation of a tangible thing that people want to use. It's very satisfying. <br> <br>Working without deadlines is a delight. I spent years building FreeAgent but it always felt like a massive rush. Corners were cut, I had to be slapdash often. This was fine because we got the product out there and shipped new features regularly, but this time I'm enjoying taking a bit longer to make sure the code remains as good as I can make it. No deadlines can also be a curse – some people <em>need </em>a deadline, a bit of external pressure, in order to instil momentum. There's a danger without one you end up noodling, but I'm not worried about this myself because I'm far too impatient. I have an inner ghoul that insists I try and get stuff out there ASAP, and I can already hear it moaning.<br><br>Exploring how much leverage one can exploit from the advances in tech fascinates me. Is being a 'SaaS solopreneur' realistic? Is it feasible for a single person (with a bit of contractor help should profits allow) to design, build, operate and support a SaaS product at reasonable scale? When does it all break down? There are <a href="https://twitter.com/levelsio">plenty</a> of <a href="https://twitter.com/yongfook">examples</a> of this happening <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23buildinpublic%20mrr">in the wild,</a> so I'm intrigued to see how it pans out despite knowing first-hand about the perils. The "build a SaaS" meme is all too real. <br> <br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--png">
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</a>
</figure><br> <br> At the end of the day I love the excitement of how the startup story unfolds. The characters you meet, the endless plot twists, all the possible outcomes. This is the same whether you're bootstrapping or raising a rocket-shaped wedge. It may come to something, it might flop, or you could just get cold or itchy feet, but if you believe in the thing and can enjoy the ride, it's worth taking the plunge. <br><br>As for the product, it's not quite ready for a public reveal yet. Not even so much as a teaser, soz. I want to feel more confident about what's cooking before I serve it up. That said, if you happen to be interested in a low-touch, low-cost, high value (potentially) product that <strong>brings your team together</strong> and <strong>helps people be more productive</strong>, all <strong>without being yet another distraction</strong>, then email me at <a href="mailto:olly@hey.com">olly@hey.com</a> as I'd quite like a chat in the coming weeks. <br><br>✌️😇 <br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/30726
2023-08-14T22:00:06Z
2023-08-15T07:21:03Z
Ruby on Rails as a career choice in 2023
<div class="trix-content">
<blockquote><em>“Gasping but somehow still alive”<br><br></em>— The Smiths, Well I Wonder</blockquote><div><br>Occasionally someone gets in touch with me asking for work advice. I had one recently where the questioner was rather taken with Rails but asked, “Do you think Ruby on Rails lacks enough jobs? I’m concerned about the future.” It’s a good question, and while my gut reaction was “of course, Rails is <em>awesome!</em>” I was actually conflicted trying to give out objective career advice. <br><br></div><div>Few would argue that Rails marked a paradigm shift for web development, but I’d agree that it had its heyday commercially around a decade ago. For several years I’ve watched as <a href="https://dev.to/remy29/on-death-and-dying-ruby-on-rails-5d7f">people call out</a> the <a href="https://blog.railwaymen.org/is-ruby-on-rails-dead">demise of Rails</a> in the face of exponential growth in JavaScript tech – namely React.js, TypeScript and Node. It still <em>feels</em> to me (🚨confirmation bias alert) like there’s a mini Rails renaissance coming, but I’m struggling to find any compelling evidence other than the existence of the <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/foundation">Rails Foundation</a> and <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/world">Rails World</a>. There is certainly a solid set of established tech companies with Rails at the core of their business (off the top of my head Shopify, GitHub, 37signals, AirBnb, FreeAgent, Intercom, Doximity, Procore, Cookpad, Zendesk), but from my experience in the angel investment world over the last few years I’d say there are very few startups adopting it in 2023 (if you know of any, let me know!).</div><div><br>In the <a href="https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#technology">most recent Stack Overflow survey</a> Ruby scores marginally higher than assembly language (!!) while prom queen JavaScript sits at the top of the popularity pile. <br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure><br><br>Things aren’t much better in the Web Frameworks and Technologies list where Rails sits at the bottom of the class alongside NestJS (a Node framework) and Svelte (a front-end JS framework). Node and React top this list, holding over 80% of the vote between them. You’d think the game was up. HackerRank kind of <a href="https://www.hackerrank.com/blog/most-in-demand-languages-2023/">thinks it is</a>. <br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpeg">
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</figure></div><div><a href="https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#most-popular-technologies-language"><br></a>These same surveys cite that Rails jobs tend to be some of the best paid, often more than JavaScript jobs. This is certainly encouraging, but it could just be because there’s a whole lot of legacy Rails code out there that needs maintaining and ageing Rails devs are milking the situation while they still can. <br><br>One of the most overlooked things about both Ruby and Rails is that they’re <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/doctrine#optimize-for-programmer-happiness">optimised for developer happiness</a>. Having programmed extensively in C++ and Java in my younger years, moving to Ruby in 2007 was a total delight. I’ve never <em>not</em> liked working with Ruby and I feel the same about Rails. Once upon a time I wrote web apps in Java, first using J2EE (😱), then Struts, and finally Spring. The latter two were not terrible, but they induced none of the absolute joy I still get when writing Rails code. But this is me. When I talk to developers who started out with React and Node, they absolutely love it! I struggle a bit to understand why, but that’s because I’ve only played with them superficially and I’ve never built anything of substance with them. <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/the-curing-value-of-creation-98736f9f">There’s an inherent joy in just <em>building something</em></a><em>,</em> and maybe that’s enough regardless of the kick you get using particular tools. The proof is in the pudding.<br><br>Despite being a Rails advocate for over 16 years and having served on the board of the Rails Foundation for 6 months, I’ll admit that <em>statistically speaking</em> you shouldn’t start your career by focusing on Rails. Most jobs don’t want Rails experience, so you’re probably doing yourself a disservice. Despite this, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/ruby-on-rails-jobs/?currentJobId=3666449300&originalSubdomain=uk">there <em>are</em> Rails jobs out there</a> and by deciding to learn Rails you’ll get one of the quickest, simplest and most enjoyable groundings in how web apps work. This knowledge of the web is fundamental, regardless of which language or framework you’re using, so it’s going to be time well spent – the more you understand the basics, the easier it becomes to flip between languages and frameworks. <br><br>This was essentially the advice I gave the questioner. Do what you love. If you love Rails as much as you say, give it a go. It will give you an excellent grounding, and the code principles are the same. If you find that jobs are hard to come by, make the switch to something else at that point. <br><br>As it turned out, he decided to stick with his current job using Java/Spring with React on the front end. He said that while he loved Rails more, he felt Java was a better choice for ongoing employment in the future. Makes sense, but for a Rails die hard I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. </div><div><br></div><div>Without question the <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/foundation">Rails Foundation</a> has a steep climb ahead of it, but momentum is definitely building and I’m hopeful the renaissance <em>I can feel in my bones</em> is for real. <br><br>See you at Rails World in October! ✌️😊<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</figure><br><br></div>
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Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/29568
2023-06-09T12:02:16Z
2023-06-09T12:04:49Z
How hybrid can work
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</figure></div><div><br>The gloves are off. The work experts are at war. Officista VCs are proclaiming that <a href="https://twitter.com/DavidSacks/status/1663958149437743105">remote doesn’t work</a> and the media seem to be <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/work-from-home-era-ends-for-millions-of-americans-8bb75367">buying it</a>. AI-generated CEOs are <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/05/05/openai-ceo-sam-altman-remote-work-mistake-return-to-office/">calling it a mistake</a> or, worse, <a href="https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-remote-work-laptop-class-cnbc-interview-1850444432">morally wrong</a>. On the flipside, remoterinos <a href="https://twitter.com/shl/status/1664024916109434880">continue</a> to <a href="https://twitter.com/chris_herd/status/1663830259748184066">disagree</a>. As for a hybrid arrangement, that’s <a href="https://world.hey.com/dhh/hybrid-combines-the-worst-of-office-and-remote-work-d3174e50">a total clusterfuck</a>.<br><br></div><div>The funny thing is they’re all right because, as with anything nuanced that isn’t literally black or white, <em>it depends!</em></div><div><br>I prefer working from home at the moment (not that I’m actually <a href="https://world.hey.com/olly/venturing-into-the-unknown-again-fa1ea1bc">doing much work right now</a> 😳). I find it rather liberating and much more relaxing. I used to really enjoy being in the FreeAgent office back in the day, and being able (i.e. privileged enough) to walk to work was a treat. Granted many people’s commutes, especially in the smoggy metropoles, can be a suffocating experience but I always enjoyed working in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_End_of_London">West End</a> and felt it worth the morning mauling on the tube. Getting some daily exercise is way more of a grind when you’re working from home.<br><br></div><div>I prefer it at home but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with insisting your staff work from an office. It would be churlish to suggest remote working is for everyone since being co-located might make sense for some businesses, and many people actually prefer being in an office, around other people, in a bustling city centre. Whether it’s more or less productive for workers, or even a Machiavellian plot by evil-doing managers, is beside the point. It’s a legit and sensible option in lots of cases.<br><br></div><div>While my working persuasion is more remote-leaning, I’d still class myself as something of a hybridarian but not with this “New Hybrid” approach. To me, a hybrid team means you have some staff that are fully remote, and some who are not. New Hybrid is just “flexible working”. It can't be “remote” if it’s part time. There needs to be a distinction here but I get that <a href="https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html">naming things is hard</a>.<br><br></div><div>I definitely have a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14403178/">beef</a> with how this New Hybrid is being implemented, which seems to be via fixed days in the office with some at home. Mandated days are a stick, pure and simple, since there’s little evidence that in-person collaboration or in-office productivity is better. Maybe I'm wrong, but I get the feeling that leaders are just trying to control something, or that they don’t trust their staff for some reason. If your company has an office and you want people who prefer working from home to come in (even if only to justify having the office expense), then allow people to come and go as they please. Let them be free to treat the office like a co-working space, and allow people to use their time in the office as much for socialising and human interaction as work. Don’t mandate days. You can't mandate creativity on a Tuesday morning. Just give people some agency, and trust them. Evaluate people on their output. You also need to take a more asynchronous, remote-first approach across the board. This will result in fewer meetings, which means more work getting done. Write things down and afford people the time to digest it and craft a thoughtful response. Rely less on whiteboards, post-its, or even Slack and email (which is where discussions go to die). Nurture this culture. <br><br></div><div>The other option for "making hybrid work" is to take the old school hybrid approach. I ran the FreeAgent engineering team like this from way back in 2010. If you lived in Edinburgh, you came to the office. Otherwise you were remote. We weren't very flexible other than that which was of it's time, I guess. We went down this path because we couldn’t hire enough Ruby talent locally, so we looked further afield to find the most talented people we possibly could. And we found some amazing people! <br><br>In the early days running a team this way was tricky. Without question there was some initial skepticism about how this would work, and the default culture outwith engineering was naturally pro-office, because that's where everyone else worked. Remote staff would visit the office periodically (sometimes every few weeks, sometimes once a year) which helped bond the team, but we had to work hard to build a remote-first culture using online tools, lots of writing and being intentional about including everyone, all the time. Over time the team grew and we reached a decent critical mass of remote staff, then worked to keep the ratio around 40-50% remote to maintain the balance and the culture. I think this worked remarkably well, and it felt genuinely like a "best of both worlds" situation which is why I think hybrid, in this way, can work!<br><br></div><div>This isn't to say it's easy, and it requires someone at the top (👋) to be the remote champion, reinforcing all the time why we need to work a certain way, correcting behaviours and listening to remote staff to make sure the environment is working for them. If the people at the top have a fixed in-office mindset, it just isn't going to end well, so why bother?</div><div><br>Remote working isn’t over, and in-office working isn’t dead. Proper hybrid means running a mix of in-office and distributed staff. Companies can choose to go New Hybrid and offer flexible working so staff can work from home a few days, but this will require a change in the working culture. Treat your staff like adults and allow them to <a href="https://hbr.org/2023/05/research-the-flexibility-options-your-on-site-employees-want">work where they like, when they like</a>, and make being in the office a treat rather than a punishment.<br><br>You can make any arrangement work, all you need to do is actually believe in it.<br><br></div>
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Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/29379
2023-05-31T14:39:47Z
2023-05-31T14:51:43Z
Stop hiring too many people
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</a>
</figure> <br><br>I did a talk out in Portugal to a group of company founders this time last year and I bait-named it “Lose the body fat. Why keeping your company lean makes it more attractive.” I pulled in a reasonable crowd and the talk went down <em>okay</em>, but not as well as I’d hoped, so I buried it in my Keynote graveyard and hoped never to speak of it again. Yet here I am exhuming the rotten thing to re-examine whether it warrants a new line of investigation, and as it turns out, I think it does!<br><br></div><div>In the talk, before getting distracted by a deep dive into <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/mathematics-leadership-team-size-catastrophe-theory-mark-logan/">Mark Logan’s Team Size and Catastrophe theory</a> (you should read that btw), I hypothesised that:<br><br></div><blockquote><em>Too many scale-ups grow too big too quickly without understanding the costs. This will make them less effective and less attractive.</em></blockquote><div><br></div><div>At the time things were getting a little rocky in VC-land. There were bleak talks like “RIP Good Times” and seasoned investors were telling founders that they needed 36 months runway, minimum, and if they didn’t have that then get out there first thing on Monday and <em>raise,</em> whatever the terms. Dilution be damned, runaway was all that mattered. The stark thing for me was how many companies were in this seemingly perilous situation. Was there a pattern, and could this situation have been avoided?<br><br>This is nothing against the investment-backed growth model. In fact I’d say this model is the right choice for many (most?) tech startups. Of course everyone loves <em>the idea</em> of bootstrapping and being profitable from day one, but many great companies struggle to bootstrap for a litany of legit reasons. We tried to bootstrap <a href="https://www.freeagent.com/">FreeAgent</a> for well over 2 years unpaid, while also becoming new parents and taking on part time work to cover the rent and nappy bills. We would have absolutely <em>loved</em> to have bootstrapped it to the moon but, frankly, it would likely have died without outside investment. Now it thrives and y’all love it so don’t tell me bootstrapping is the only righteous path </soapbox>.<br><br></div><div>The trouble comes with the traditional high-burn for high-growth tactic that we see play out in countless startups. There are many examples of this working out, but I don’t think it should be the default position. Is hiring aggressively really that effective, or does it actually create more problems and distractions than it solves? You raise money to invest in growth, of course, but my view is that even if you’ve raised several million, you should still only <a href="https://m.signalvnoise.com/hire-when-it-hurts/">hire when it hurts</a>. Sit on the rest until you get a feel for things. Bide your time until you’re really feeling the pain. Know what you need to do before you hire people to do it. When you’ve got incredible traction and the only thing required is selling the damn thing, literally throw supercar bonuses at sales people but in most areas, like engineering, product, marketing, I’d recommend restraint. Resist that urge to splurge. <br><br>By intentionally keeping your company lean, you delay hiring additional engineering managers, product managers, social media managers or, worse, people to manage the managers. You might well need them eventually, but keep things flat for as long as possible because your organisation’s structure will be simpler, people will have more agency, and trust among your smaller team will be higher which means everyone is happier and more productive. You can choose to pay people more too. I’d argue this will make your company stand out and be more attractive. At least to people who want to work for a sustainable, profitable company that provides the autonomy to create, build and ship great work. </div><div><br>In 2018 when we sold our company, the buyer invested a wedge. I don’t remember how much but it was in the millions. We went off and hired like rabbits. I think we doubled the team in 18 months. Why? Because it would allow us to do more, faster! At least that’s what we believed. The cost was enormous – a multi-million commitment every year on salaries and an equally painful overhead in having to manage it all. It wasn’t plain sailing but the bet was that this investment in people would grow the business more quickly and result in further market share and profitability. Did it work? Hard to say. Maybe eventually, but at what cost? And who’s to say taking a less aggressive approach wouldn’t have been more successful? In hindsight, I’d argue we could have achieved just as much with fewer people.<br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--png">
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</a>
</figure></div><div>In the past year most startups/scale ups I’m involved with have been downsizing one way or another, while the tech titans have been offboarding people in their thousands – a bitter indigestion pill following their gluttonous people-binge during the Covid era. Startups want to extend their runway, while the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faamg-stocks.asp">FAAMGS</a> want to milk profitability for all it’s worth, sure, but underlying all this is the fact that companies (and, seemingly, VCs like Andreessen) are starting to figure out that they can do the same, if not more, with less. With this comes short term pain for many, but I'm hopeful we'll see more longer-lived, healthier companies going forward. <br><br>RIP Greedy Times.</div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/28856
2023-05-11T18:55:17Z
2023-05-11T19:35:45Z
Venturing into the unknown. Again.
<div class="trix-content">
<div>It only seems like yesterday when I <a href="https://world.hey.com/olly/getting-real-with-a-new-job-5ebc0b55">started a new role at 37signals</a> but time hurtles by when you're having a wild adventure (<a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/7/20/9003175/years-passing-visualization">even more so when you're pushing 50</a> 😳). And just as all the best adventures must come to an end, so it is that after an intense 14-month journey I've decided it's time for something new. <br><br>Things are afoot and it's bittersweet. <br><br>I'm sat here, a couple of hours after saying goodbye, trying to write something lasting and meaningful but words are failing me. I've got so much I want to say, but it's not coming out. Not today. I hadn't anticipated this, but it's all a bit much so, what the hell, in true 37signals fashion I figured I should just publish the full announcement I made to the company yesterday verbatim and leave it at that 🥹<br> </div><blockquote>Sorry to spring a surprise but I wanted to let you know that tomorrow will be my last day at 37signals 😱<br><br>I absolutely love 37signals, all you great people, our awesome products, this high-trust environment, and all the excitement that's happening around the new products. I feel honoured, truly, to have had the opportunity to be part of the 37s journey for the past 14 months and it's been a wild ride. Truth be told, I feel like the job I came here to do is reasonably complete, so it's the right time for me to go and build something new again. I miss being part of the action!<br><br>I'm leaving with things in good shape, but I'll be spending today and tomorrow tying up a few loose ends and handing things over, so please ping me if you need anything. Hopefully I won't be leaving anyone in the lurch 😬 but I'm only an email away. <br><br>Making this decision was tough, a real gut wrench, but l'm a believer in following your heart. 37signals really is a remarkable company full of remarkable people. One of the greats. I leave with only good things to say about the company, the people and the culture. I will miss you all enormously, but I'II be taking many wonderful memories and new found friendships away with me.<br><br>Thanks for everything 🙏❤️</blockquote><div><br><br></div><div> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpeg">
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</a>
</figure><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">The happiest of times with some of the best people you could hope to meet at the Hotel Monteleone cocktail bar, French Quarter, New Orleans, April 2023 </em><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">❤️</span></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/24949
2022-12-26T12:52:10Z
2022-12-26T13:06:04Z
My 2022 in culture
<div class="trix-content">
<div>2022 almost felt normal, at least in terms of going to the cinema, theatre, gigs. Here’s a quick look back on the things I watched/read/listened to across the year.<br><br><strong>Music</strong><br>I don’t feel I listened to that much great new music in 2022, or found an album that I just couldn’t stop listening to. There were some good ones, of course, and the top 10 lists of the usual media outlets were fawning over Beyoncé, Wet Leg, Kendrick, but I didn’t love them as <em>albums</em>. Some great tracks on each, but they didn’t connect with me. Maybe I’m just getting old 😅 Here are the albums that I listened to most. <br><br></div><ul><li><strong>Hall of Fame</strong> - Polo G (released towards the end of 2021 but I only discovered it this year)</li><li><strong>The Car</strong> - Arctic Monkeys</li><li><strong>Actual Life 3</strong> - Fred again…</li><li><strong>If I never know you like this again</strong> - SOAK</li><li><strong>Unwanted </strong>- Pale Waves</li><li><strong>Skinty Fia</strong> - Fontaines D.C</li><li><strong>Dawn FM </strong>- The Weeknd</li><li><strong>Midnights </strong>- Taylor Swift</li></ul><div><br>There were loads of other tracks I liked and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5BkYx0rIQBQX1H3dnLAoxi?si=al6obGGNTW63_xQTrHPDCw">I made a playlist</a> of those.</div><div><br><strong>Gigs</strong><br>I went to a few gigs this year, listed below in order of my faves (best first).<br><br></div><ul><li><strong>Lorde</strong>. Usher Hall, Edinburgh. This was just incredible. I’d seen her play Glasto on the TV which was fabulous, but seeing her live was mesmerising.</li><li><strong>SOAK</strong>. The Caves, Edinburgh. I hadn’t heard of SOAK until Spotify recommended the album. It’s a good album but the band really came into their own live, especially in a venue as beautiful and intimate as The Caves. </li><li><strong>Fontaines D.C</strong>. O2 Academy, Edinburgh. Massive band, excellent performance.</li><li><strong>Pavement</strong>. Usher Hall, Edinburgh. Legends, performing hit after hit. </li><li><strong>Roy Ayers Ubiquity</strong>. Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh. Despite being in his 80s, Roy has still got it and his band were super-tight.</li><li><strong>Dinosaur Jr.</strong> QMU, Glasgow. Typical Mascis noisefest. Good, but it felt like they were just going through the motions.</li></ul><div><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure></div><div><br><strong>Theatre<br></strong>Had a few trips to the theatre for some notable shows, most at the Edinburgh Fringe which was back in full for 2022.<br><br></div><ul><li><strong>Hamilton</strong>, London. Finally saw this and it didn’t disappoint. Quite possibly the best musical I’ve seen (and I’ve seen most of the big ones).</li><li><strong>Dear Evan Hansen</strong>, NYC. Saw this on holiday and loved it, made even more special by the surprise (to us, at least) appearance of Gaten Matarazzo as Jared on his first night.</li><li><strong>August Wilson’s How I Learned What I Learned</strong> (Edinburgh Fringe). This was a tremendous one man show. Stunning performance.</li><li><strong>Yippee Ki Yay</strong> (Edinburgh Fringe). A one man reenactment of Die Hard. Simply astonishing. </li><li><strong>Bloody Elle - A Gig Musical</strong> (Edinburgh Fringe). A one woman acting/musical show about a working class woman growing up and coming out in the north. Amazing.</li></ul><div><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure></div><div><br><strong>Film / TV</strong><br>I didn’t watch that much. I did create a long list of things I want to watch, but I never seem to find the time. Here are some of the few things I saw that I enjoyed. <br><br></div><ul><li><strong>Andor </strong>(Disney+). Best Star Wars series yet, by far.</li><li><strong>The Playlist </strong>(Netflix). I love a good tech startup drama and this one didn’t disappoint.</li><li><strong>Thirteen Lives</strong>. I never watched the documentary The Rescue but I thought this dramatisation of the Thailand cave rescue was excellent.</li><li><strong>Where the Crawdads Sing</strong>. Good adaptation of the book.</li><li><strong>Top Gun: Maverick</strong>. More Tom Cruise in fighter jets… what’s not to like?</li><li><strong>The Lost King</strong>. An average movie but it was fun location spotting since most of it was filmed in Edinburgh (including near our house).</li><li><strong>Bullet Train</strong>. I quite enjoyed the book but I didn’t think much of the film. Way too much Hollywood silliness. Admittedly Brad Pitt plays a good part. </li><li><strong>The Duke</strong>. Excellent British film with Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren.</li></ul><div><br><strong>Books<br></strong>I had a good start to the year and read quite a few, but then started a new job and didn’t read for months. I need to change that in 2023. Here are some books I liked.<strong><br></strong><br></div><ul><li><strong>Invisible Child</strong> - Andrea Elliot. This is honestly one of the best books I’ve read. It won a Pulitzer Prize. Go read it. Wow.</li><li><strong>Stamped</strong> - Jason Reynolds. I’m a big Reynolds fan. This one is a young adult version of <em>Stamped from the Beginning </em>and it’s superb. Give it to your teenage kids.</li><li><strong>Bullet Train </strong>- Kōtarō Isaka. I read this before I watched the film. It’s ok, not amazing, but I liked the concept. </li><li><strong>The Paper Palace</strong> - Miranda Cowley Heller. I absolutely <em>loved </em>this novel. Beautifully written, I didn’t want it to end. Will read it again and I rarely do that.</li><li><strong>Four Thousand Weeks</strong> - Oliver Burkeman. I wouldn’t say it changed my life (as per some of the reviews) but it’s certainly a timely reminder about the shortness of life.</li><li><strong>And Away…</strong> - Bob Mortimer. People were raving about this. It had its moments, but I thought it was a bit overrated. </li></ul><div><br>Would love to hear your thoughts and recommendations. </div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/24213
2022-11-18T15:53:04Z
2022-11-18T23:42:33Z
Your company can make ‘remote’ work, it's just choosing not to
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</figure><br><br>2020 forced the majority of people in tech to work from home. It happened in days, and for the most part companies managed this upheaval without major issues because they were <em>already</em> using tools to make remote work possible. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service">SaaS</a> has become ubiquitous. Whiteboards were left untouched and there was an early fall of sticky notes on meeting room floors, but online workarounds were straightforward. Many people missed the hum of the office, watercooler chats and post-work drinks, but the majority did not. It turns out <a href="https://www.techrepublic.com/article/deloitte-report-finds-employees-more-productive-during-pandemic/">everyone became <em>more</em> productive</a> despite being trapped indoors, drenched in our collective anxiety over a once-a-century global pandemic.<br><br></div><div>Why, then, are companies starting to insist that staff return to the office <a href="https://hubblehq.com/blog/famous-companies-workplace-strategies">either fully or in an awkward hybrid arrangement</a>? Many employees don’t want to return, or they would prefer to use the office on <em>their</em> terms not their employers, but many in leadership think they know better.</div><div><br>It’s true that some people do want to get back in full time. This could be because office life suits their role, they like the buzz, the office <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bantz">bantz</a>, or maybe they have home arrangements that make working remotely a challenge. However, these people <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2021/10/05/the-great-disconnect-many-more-employers-than-workers-want-to-return-to-offices/?sh=7d0d3d251ad3">are in the minority</a> so forcing people in against their will, either full-time or on arbitrary days, seems like poor judgement. A failure to listen. Other than small startups where everyone being hired actually wants to be colocated, I’ve yet to hear a compelling argument for a forced return.</div><div><br>A lot of companies are trapped in expensive leases so they can’t ditch the office or even downsize. If you’re paying for the space, I agree that you might as well make use of it, but you need a major rethink of <em>how</em> you use it. <br><br>Covid taught us that people want more flexibility in their working day, yet companies continue to insist on a <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90752665/why-the-9-to-5-schedule-has-lost-its-place-in-the-workplace">long-outdated 9-5 schedule</a>. Some offer more flexibility yet insist on “core hours”, but people want to make their own decisions about where and when to work. Covid afforded them this flex – doing the school run, extended periods of childcare, longer lunchtimes to cook and do your daily walk. All this became acceptable during the pandemic <em>and productivity increased</em>. Why put an end to it?<br><br></div><div>You could make the office a place to hang instead. Drop those core hours and let people come and go as they please. If someone wants to come in one day a week or an hour a day, let them. Stop clockwatching. Be upfront with what’s expected in terms of hours worked each week, then respect their judgement and measure on output. You don’t need assigned desks for the most part, so figure our how to hot-desk. You’re probably giving everyone laptops already, and there’s <a href="https://kadence.co/uk/">software</a> to help. If the office is still too empty for you, why not go the whole hog and turn your office into a co-working space and use it as a new revenue stream?<br><br></div><div>Company leadership commonly cites “collaboration” as the primary reason for getting people back into the office. There have been <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01196-4">studies</a> that show collaboration can suffer remotely, but this is attributed to an increase in asynchronous communication. I don’t buy it. You can collaborate just fine over the wire, and having done it for most of 2022 I’d counter that async is beneficial for the most part because <a href="https://world.hey.com/jason/collaborating-away-653ed7ef">ideas don’t give a shit about four walls and a whiteboard</a>. Companies are maintaining an on-site mindset while paying lip service to remote and completely ignoring the benefits of asynchronous communication (you get these benefits whether you’re co-located or remote). It seems like a failure of trust, choosing to monitor performance by time and presence over impact. Some unfortunate employees have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/14/business/worker-productivity-tracking.html">found themselves literally being watched</a>. This is dehumanising.<br><br></div><div>At <a href="https://37signals.com/">37signals</a> we do fully remote, mostly asynchronous. There are no core hours because everyone is in a different time zone, so even if we wanted to (we don’t) it wouldn’t make sense. The company is clear that staff should put in a solid 40-hour week, but you can take your pick over which hours you choose. Productivity is <a href="https://updates.37signals.com/">off the charts</a>.<br><br></div><div>I’ve also been wondering whether a major impediment to companies embracing asynchronous work is tooling. 37signals make async work because <a href="https://basecamp.com/">Basecamp</a> is designed to embrace that way of working, but the most commonly used products such as Google Docs, Office 365, Slack and email fail spectacularly when it comes to async. They lack even the most basic threaded discussion forum, so you’re stuck in real-time chat or email purgatory. Small wonder everyone resorts to bashing things out in meetings all day every day for all the time and energy that wastes.<br><br></div><div>If you’re intrigued enough to try it for a while, it isn’t hard to figure out how to make your workflow more asynchronous. Maybe you can find a way using your existing toolset, but if not there are plenty of other tools to use like <a href="https://basecamp.com/">Basecamp</a>, <a href="https://twist.com/">Twist</a>, or <a href="https://www.notion.so/Your-company-can-make-remote-work-it-just-chooses-not-to-4523d8369f944732b5cbc388c0688e25">Discourse</a>. Even <a href="https://notion.so/">Notion</a> can kinda work. If you’re still a doubter, have a read of the <a href="https://37signals.com/how-we-communicate">37signals guide to internal communication</a> and <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/asynchronous/">Gitlab’s in-depth async guide</a>. Do they change your mind?<br><br></div><div>Despite these corporate clampdown blues, remote work has never been more popular. Many companies the world over are choosing to embrace it, and job boards <a href="https://remote.co/remote-jobs/">are</a> <a href="https://weworkremotely.com/">awash</a> with exciting and lucrative remote opportunities. The world has changed already, and companies refusing to accept this will pay for it in mediocrity or, worse, obsolescence.</div><div><br>Time for a remote rethink.<br><br><br></div><div><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Photo by </em><a href="https://unsplash.com/@mediaprofile "><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">MEDIAPROFILE</em></a><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"> on </em><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/b1g-aFHJA2M"><em style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">Unsplash</em></a></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/24039
2022-11-10T09:51:15Z
2022-11-10T09:56:45Z
Products I use to manage work and life admin
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</figure><br><br>To friends and family I’m thought of as a proper techie, but to the <strong><em>real</em></strong> techies I know my tech-fu would be considered rather weak. This is fair. I like using tech to get stuff done and make my life easier, but I don’t really go for nerding out on tech for the sake of nerding out on tech.</div><div><br>I manage my work and my increasingly-overflowing plate of life admin almost exclusively in digital form. I have a pen and a variety of notepads in my desk drawer, but they don’t get much action, sitting there in lonely solidarity alongside the staples and micro-USB cables.<br><br></div><div>I thought I’d write a list of all the apps and tools I use so in years to come I can look back and marvel at how things have changed, what tools survived, and what bit the dust. Some things have been on this list for over a decade, so a lot of the things I use are robust and built to last.<br><br></div><h1><strong>Work</strong></h1><div>My work laptop is a 14” MacBook Pro M1 Pro with 32GB RAM in Space Grey, mainly so I can differentiate it from my personal laptop.<br><br></div><div>At <a href="https://37signals.com/">37signals</a> we use <a href="https://basecamp.com/">Basecamp</a> almost exclusively for communication and project admin. We have <a href="https://www.hey.com/domains/">HEY for Domains</a>, but we hardly use email. I use it to read the Basecamp Latest Activity email each morning, and the odd email to an external vendor. We also have a Google Workplace account which we use for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_sign-on">SSO</a>, and I occasionally use it for spreadsheets (tabular data in Basecamp isn’t really possible), but that’s it. It’s a marvellous, refreshing way to work and unless you work for a larger corporation, I suggest you give it a try.<br><br></div><div> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure><br><br>To Do lists are central to Basecamp, but for keeping track of my own private list of work stuff I use <a href="https://todo.microsoft.com/">Microsoft To Do</a>. I was a fan of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wunderlist">Wunderlist</a> in the distant past and (I think) it morphed into Microsoft To Do after Microsoft acquired it. I really like it. It’s a fast, simple app that I can chuck stuff in quickly. Done ✅<br><br></div><div>For keeping track of all my work notes, 1-1s, team calls etc, I use <a href="https://www.notion.so/">Notion</a>. I like Notion, it’s great at what it does. It’s arguably overcomplicated for what I need, but I’m kinda committed now. It’s really fast, so I can just chuck stuff in there and (usually) find things easily. I can keep things neatly organised (unlike, say, Google Drive - urgh). I don’t put all this stuff into Basecamp because I consider it private. I also use Notion for my own personal work stuff, e.g. side projects/gigs, house etc.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--png">
<a download="notion.png" title="Download notion.png" data-click-proxy-target="lightbox_link_blob_1006088335" href="https://world.hey.com/olly/fe5c45eb/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCSSt3OXpzPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--9b1d8795d1aa5a68258d3666de170163e6d8dd2c/notion.png?disposition=attachment">
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</a>
</figure></div><div><br></div><div>When I’m writing code I use <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/">VS Code</a>. It’s great. I went from TextMate, to Sublime Text, to VS Code - each one better than the other. The plug-ins are amazing. I use <a href="https://desktop.github.com/">Github Desktop</a> because it helps me better visualise what I’m about to commit than the terminal view does. For terminal work I use <a href="https://iterm2.com/">iTerm2</a> and <a href="https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh">ohmyzsh</a> out of the box. <br><br></div><div>I currently use the <a href="https://thebrowser.company/">Arc browser</a> for work. It’s based on Chromium so all my plug-ins work, and I get the Chrome dev tools. It’s taking a bit of getting used to but I really like the Cmd+T workflow and having tabs in the sidebar.</div><div><br></div><h1><strong>Personal</strong></h1><div>I have a personal laptop – a 14” MacBook Pro M1 Max with 32GB RAM in classic silver. You can go all Don Johnson and get a white Ferrari (with matching suit), but you know deep down that a classic red one looks better. It’s the same with silver MacBooks. Bite me.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
<a download="don.jpg" title="Download don.jpg" data-click-proxy-target="lightbox_link_blob_1006088716" href="https://world.hey.com/olly/fe5c45eb/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQXl5OXpzPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--d95e836a5bd51d33a1ebb3699d3801a7e8183cbf/don.jpg?disposition=attachment">
<img src="https://world.hey.com/olly/fe5c45eb/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQXl5OXpzPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--d95e836a5bd51d33a1ebb3699d3801a7e8183cbf/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDam9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJYW5CbkJqb0dSVlE2RkhKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5c2FXMXBkRnNIYVFLQUIya0NBQVU2REhGMVlXeHBkSGxwU3pvTGJHOWhaR1Z5ZXdZNkNYQmhaMlV3T2cxamIyRnNaWE5qWlZRPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--0b5e092e6240e14fab357b4c1013c9a0c881ff87/don.jpg" alt="don.jpg" srcset="https://world.hey.com/olly/fe5c45eb/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQXl5OXpzPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--d95e836a5bd51d33a1ebb3699d3801a7e8183cbf/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDam9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJYW5CbkJqb0dSVlE2RkhKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5c2FXMXBkRnNIYVFJQUQya0NBQW82REhGMVlXeHBkSGxwUVRvTGJHOWhaR1Z5ZXdZNkNYQmhaMlV3T2cxamIyRnNaWE5qWlZRPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--a8a2bb6a9884c661ef30854054544882621a1752/don.jpg 2x, https://world.hey.com/olly/fe5c45eb/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQXl5OXpzPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--d95e836a5bd51d33a1ebb3699d3801a7e8183cbf/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDam9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJYW5CbkJqb0dSVlE2RkhKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5c2FXMXBkRnNIYVFLQUZta0NBQTg2REhGMVlXeHBkSGxwUERvTGJHOWhaR1Z5ZXdZNkNYQmhaMlV3T2cxamIyRnNaWE5qWlZRPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--9b7ba00c32731d121dd7ff5706d31cc3652788dd/don.jpg 3x" decoding="async" loading="lazy">
</a>
</figure></div><div><br>I have an <a href="https://www.apple.com/uk/studio-display/">Apple Studio Display</a> which I use when at my desk, with the MacBook Pro closed. One screen is enough for me, and what a screen! I love it. I paid more for the adjustable height monitor because why would I want to put a shonky Amazon monitor stand or some books under it to get it to the right height? That would be a crime against the minimalistic vibe I’m going for. I use an Apple Magic Keyboard (the one with Touch ID) and a Magic Trackpad. I tried using a mechanical keyboard but I didn’t like it. I find the Magic Keyboard more comfortable, I type more accurately and it looks better (see above: I’m not a <strong>real</strong> techie).<br><br></div><div> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
<a download="desk.jpg" title="Download desk.jpg" data-click-proxy-target="lightbox_link_blob_1006087973" href="https://world.hey.com/olly/fe5c45eb/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQ1d2OXpzPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--86b7bcd8915463c4bb8d8f225db3da2a3df71926/desk.jpg?disposition=attachment">
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</a>
</figure></div><div><br>I’m all-in with Apple. I’m a fanboy, sure, but the alternatives (Windows, Android, Linux) are too painful to think about. I have an iPhone 13 Pro an iPad Pro 11” (M2). I use the iPad and pencil for editing photos in <a href="https://lightroom.adobe.com/">Lightroom CC</a>, and I create mixes with <a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/traktor-dj-2/id1319355657">Traktor DJ</a>. It’s also great for reading magazines via <a href="https://www.overdrive.com/apps/libby">Libby</a>.</div><div><br>I use Safari for browsing. It syncs between all my devices and gives me Apple Pay and Touch ID, even on my Mac. For random notes I use (you guessed it) Apple Notes, which are handy for sharing lists with my family. I use Apple Reminders for keeping track of all those life admin things to do but to be honest, I rarely look at it. <br><br></div><div>I use <a href="https://1password.com/">1Password</a> religiously, and I’ve indoctrinated my family into the cult. It’s wonderful, perhaps the most useful bit of software I have. A genuine “how would I live without this” app. Don’t think about saving a few ££ for LastPass. You get what you pay for.<br><br></div><div>I’m old school and I seem to have my fingers in lots of pies, so I deal with a lot of email. Emails from the kids’ schools and clubs, bills, business, all that. I actually really like email! I use <a href="https://hey.com/">HEY</a> for all my email now, but the majority of emails still come through my domains, so I have an account with <a href="https://ref.fm/u8234261">Fastmail</a> which handles SMTP. I just use HEY as the client. I tried to make HEY for Domains work, but it couldn’t handle my use case. I keep trying to nudge people at work about better domain support in HEY Personal but there are no plans to do that (😢), so Fastmail it is.<br><br></div><div>Our family uses iCloud for shared calendars. HEY doesn’t have a calendar so I use Fastmail for coordinating personal business-related appointments.</div><div><br>Messaging is split between WhatsApp and iMessage, and my phone calls are increasing going through WhatsApp. I use a Signal account when I have to with my nerd friends. I prefer WhatsApp, the UX is excellent. I’d just like it to support high-res images. It crushes the soul out of them right now.</div><div><br>For social media, I’m on <a href="https://twitter.com/lylo">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/oheadey/">LinkedIn</a> and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ollyheadey">Instagram</a>. I quite like them all for different reasons and purposes. I’ve been trying Mastadon (<a href="https://ruby.social/@olly">@olly@ruby.social</a>), but I can’t see me using it outside the techie circle I joined, unless Twitter completely implodes.<br><br></div><div>I’m currently using Twitter in a rather odd way. I’m not following anyone. Instead I’ve created a bunch of topic-related lists. The UX for doing this is truly awful, but once it’s set up it’s great! I can now read Twitter based on whether I want to doom-scroll current affairs, catch up with friends and colleagues, or read up on engineering topics. Twitter is rather baffled by this and my Home feed (not that I use it) is full of completely irrelevant “viral tweets” and cat videos. I’m sure Elon will do something that breaks this workflow, but it’s a refreshing way to manage Twitter.<br><br></div><div>I don’t typically read Twitter throughout the day. Instead I use <a href="https://mailbrew.com/?aff=olly">Mailbrew</a> to read it in a digest. This is particularly good because of partitioning all the accounts I follow into lists. I can now have separate sections in my daily (or weekly, for some lists) digest. I also subscribe to email lists/newsletters using my Mailbrew email address. I don’t use The Feed in HEY for this, I prefer getting them in Mailbrew. I also use Mailbrew for Read Later functionality. I don’t use Reading List in Safari or Instapaper.<br><br></div><div>I still use <a href="https://reederapp.com/">Reeder</a> for monitoring RSS feeds, but I’m gradually moving this over to Mailbrew. Honestly, Mailbrew is so good! I’m a little concerned that the makers will sell it or shut it down, since they appear to be 100% focused on Typefully now. If they mothball it, I would have to build my own version.<br><br></div><div>For music (and the odd podcast) I use <a href="https://open.spotify.com/user/lylo">Spotify</a>, which I’ve used since 2009. I still love it. I buy the albums I really dig via <a href="https://bandcamp.com/">Bandcamp</a> (or, if it’s not available on there, Qobuz etc) and use Apple Music for organising my library (I need to move this to <a href="https://brushedtype.co/doppler/">Doppler</a>). I buy dance music for DJing via <a href="https://www.junodownload.com/">Juno Download</a> and <a href="https://www.beatport.com/">Beatport</a>. I host my mixes on <a href="https://www.mixcloud.com/ollyh/">Mixcloud</a>.<br><br></div><div>I run my website at <a href="http://headey.net/">headey.net</a> which is a static site built using <a href="https://www.bridgetownrb.com/">BridgetownRB</a> and hosted on <a href="https://pages.cloudflare.com/">Cloudflare Pages</a>. My photography site at <a href="http://ollyheadey.com/">ollyheadey.com</a> runs on Adobe Portfolio which I get as part of my Lightroom CC subscription. I use a Fujifilm X-S10 and X100V for taking pictures and I use Apple Photos for storing all my JPEGs and Lightroom CC for RAW files.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
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</a>
</figure><br><br>* * * * *<br><br></div><div>That’s about it. Of course there are a bunch of smaller apps I tinker with (<a href="https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/">Rocket</a>, <a href="https://rectangleapp.com/">Rectangle</a> and <a href="https://roaringapps.com/app/amphetamine">Amphetamine</a> spring to mind), but this article covers all the main ones - I could do without the small stuff.<br><br></div><div>I’d be interested to hear your thoughts!<br><br><br><em>[Header photo by </em><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/Kw_zQBAChws"><em>Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash</em></a><em>]</em></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/23030
2022-09-13T11:21:00Z
2022-10-27T14:45:03Z
It's not your job anymore
<div class="trix-content">
<div>One of the realities of being a startup founder is having your fingers in all the pies. On the one hand you get to do a job you love, the way you want, day in day out. On the other hand you get the honour of taking on that heap of far less interesting things that need doing. This could be company finances, customer support, sales, marketing, or even washing the office tea towels (you know, right?). <br><br>Whatever job needs doing, you just gotta do it. For better or for worse.<br><br>Some of these jobs are a royal <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=PITA">PITA</a>. In my experience most founders despise having to do the hiring – writing job posts, publishing them somewhere, figuring out an applicant tracking system (or, worse, trying to roll your own). Same with customer support, or writing blog posts. Whatever it is, it can feel like a chore and a distraction. This is actually a really good response because it means you go and hire someone to do the job for you (except, for a while at least, washing the tea towels). The relief is undeniable. <br><br>This is a great result for those jobs you find irritating. The easy-to-let-go-of ones. When your fingers are in all the pies, if they don't taste good, a bit on the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fray_Bentos_(food_brand)">Fray Bentos</a> side perhaps, then you can't wait to wash your hands. <br><br>The problem comes when the pies are tasty. Delicious, homemade apple pies like writing marketing copy for the website. Mouth-watering key lime pies like coding a quick feature. These pies taste really good so<em> </em>you want to keep coming back for more. Having your fingers in these finger-licking pastried delights is hard to give up, but if you want to scale your business, at some point you're going to have to go cold turkey. <br><br>It's not your job any more.<br><br>When a company scales, people move from being generalist to specialist. You love your early employee generalists because they've had to do everything, and they've gotten pretty good at it. But you can't replicate them. Try as you might, people you hire this way will never stack up in your eyes. Instead, you need to get your generalists to focus on their core skills and responsibilities, to make them more specialist. You then need to hire specialists to do the other stuff because – and this is difficult to let go of – the specialists will do a better job of their thing in the long run. By hiring specialists you'll fill all the cracks in your walls properly, rather than just skimming over them. Your generalists might not like it but, hey, guess what?<br><br>It's not their job anymore. <br><br>One of the biggest decisions I made as co-founder/CTO was hiring a VP Engineering. It was a big decision because I did this in the correct way, which is to make that person a peer rather than an understudy (that never works). I reported to the CEO, so did they. I was handing over some major responsibilities, and I needed to let them run with it. They were the professional in this area, I wasn't. <br><br>It wasn't my job anymore.<br><br>So I let it go. And the business got better, way better. I learned a lot, and it made me better.<br><br>If you're a founder, embrace this move to specialisation. You (or the other generalists) can never know everything, or be the best at everything. It might look like that for a while after these new specialists come onboard, but don't be too hasty to judge. Gaining context at a new company takes way longer than you think. Focus on setting the cultural tone, maybe set some boundaries, while bearing in mind boundaries will inhibit creativity. Maintain an oversight but give it time. Ask questions and offer feedback, but don't step in because you think you could do it better, or more quickly. Nudge when things need nudging, but do it rarely. <br><br>Focus on giving people context, and give them time to thrive. Get your fingers out of those pies. Let the specialists specialise. <br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/22695
2022-08-22T13:32:42Z
2022-08-22T19:18:04Z
Convention over configuration to avoid contraptions
<div class="trix-content">
<div>In the world of software development, taking the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_over_configuration">convention over configuration</a> approach has many advantages. It’s no coincidence that <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/doctrine#convention-over-configuration">Ruby on Rails defined this approach</a> and the Rails framework is still unsurpassed in terms of developer productivity. If you get too trigger happy with software configuration, those indulgent experiments in esoteric architectural patterns can see your well-oiled machine transform into a mind-boggling <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Heath_Robinson">Heath Robinson</a> contraption of incoherent indirection. Still functioning, but understood by no-one and impossible to adapt. <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi6weyhv9r5AhUSUsAKHT8iBk0QyCl6BAgDEAM&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D6psa1ptpGTc&usg=AOvVaw0Ko_nikj3OlEwZFCETqCng">Gasping, but somehow still alive</a>. Any experienced programmer should know what I’m talking about. <br><br>The business world could learn a thing or two from this. For the most part, companies hire people with experience to bring in new ideas and practices to help the business adapt, grow and be more successful. To some extent this works: hiring a new operations manager will fix your questionable (or non-existent) startup HR practices, while hiring a talent specialist will bring rigour and efficiency to your hiring process. A selective and intentional application of talent and experience can do wonders, but the more you do it, the higher you raise the configuration stakes. Without careful consideration and deliberation, allowing decisions to be made without a full understanding and appreciation of existing conventions, the more you are configuring and veering into contraption territory. Contraptions create confusion and chaos. They will chew up your culture, introduce unnecessary dependencies and complexity, and result in multiple single points of failure that are hard to overcome. <br><br>When new people join a company, however well intentioned, their default mode is configuration. If left unscrutinised, these new ideas will introduce entropy to your company's operating system. Existing conventions will be infringed, which leaves them being conventions no more. It happens slowly because each change is usually small and, on the surface, of no great consequence, which makes this disregard of conventions even more dangerous. There's no obvious tipping point, it's simply a case of death by a thousand cuts. <br><br>While you should prefer convention over configuration in your business, conventions <em>should</em> be challenged because sometimes the right outcome is an adaptation. Managing this challenge is the key. You need to take a careful and considered approach to managing change, to scrutinise the reasons for and against the configuration. More often than not you’ll find that the convention is entrenched for sound reasons and it should be upheld. At least for now. <br><br>This is hard work and it's a fine balance. You have to be open to fresh ideas but remain a fervent defender of your constitution. Amendments can be made, but only after a thorough debate with clear reasons for why the change is required, what benefit it will bring, and – crucially – what the consequences are. You’ll have to live with any change you introduce and it will be inherently difficult to back out of it. Celebrate your conventions, but don’t die on a hill to defend them. You shouldn't be a corporate diehard, slavishly upholding the company handbook come what may, but at the same time don’t go believing everything is broken just because it doesn't look like what someone new is used to.<br><br>I’ve seen far more success when existing practices are understood, followed for a while, and then tweaked intentionally. When someone joins a company and decides on new approaches because that’s what worked for them in the past, not only do they offend and upset <a href="https://randsinrepose.com/archives/the-old-guard/">the old guard</a>, they're also spilling ink on the constitution, leaving it prone to being scrunched up and discarded. They need to be encouraged to continue suggesting ideas, but they shouldn't expect to be able to steamroller them through before they've learned the ropes and grokked the full context for why things are the way they are.<br><br>Ultimately, the better you can <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664">articulate your company's culture</a> in the first place – how you think, why you do the things you do – then the more success you’ll have in maintaining it. The culture inherently exists, you just need to write your constitution, while at the same time accepting its imperfections and embracing <a href="https://arapahoelibraries.org/blogs/post/the-only-constant-in-life-is-change-heraclitus/">the constant of change</a>.<br><br> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--jpg">
<a download="pablo-garcia-saldana-lPQIndZz8Mo-unsplash.jpg" title="Download pablo-garcia-saldana-lPQIndZz8Mo-unsplash.jpg" data-click-proxy-target="lightbox_link_blob_916466952" href="https://world.hey.com/olly/d5d6bdc2/blobs/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQWd0b0RZPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--49b11655efce7b91d4ecdb469533cee0b1ae7133/pablo-garcia-saldana-lPQIndZz8Mo-unsplash.jpg?disposition=attachment">
<img src="https://world.hey.com/olly/d5d6bdc2/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQWd0b0RZPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--49b11655efce7b91d4ecdb469533cee0b1ae7133/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDam9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJYW5CbkJqb0dSVlE2RkhKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5c2FXMXBkRnNIYVFLQUIya0NBQVU2REhGMVlXeHBkSGxwU3pvTGJHOWhaR1Z5ZXdZNkNYQmhaMlV3T2cxamIyRnNaWE5qWlZRPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--0b5e092e6240e14fab357b4c1013c9a0c881ff87/pablo-garcia-saldana-lPQIndZz8Mo-unsplash.jpg" alt="pablo-garcia-saldana-lPQIndZz8Mo-unsplash.jpg" srcset="https://world.hey.com/olly/d5d6bdc2/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQWd0b0RZPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--49b11655efce7b91d4ecdb469533cee0b1ae7133/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDam9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJYW5CbkJqb0dSVlE2RkhKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5c2FXMXBkRnNIYVFJQUQya0NBQW82REhGMVlXeHBkSGxwUVRvTGJHOWhaR1Z5ZXdZNkNYQmhaMlV3T2cxamIyRnNaWE5qWlZRPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--a8a2bb6a9884c661ef30854054544882621a1752/pablo-garcia-saldana-lPQIndZz8Mo-unsplash.jpg 2x, https://world.hey.com/olly/d5d6bdc2/representations/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBCQWd0b0RZPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--49b11655efce7b91d4ecdb469533cee0b1ae7133/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdDam9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJYW5CbkJqb0dSVlE2RkhKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5c2FXMXBkRnNIYVFLQUZta0NBQTg2REhGMVlXeHBkSGxwUERvTGJHOWhaR1Z5ZXdZNkNYQmhaMlV3T2cxamIyRnNaWE5qWlZRPSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoidmFyaWF0aW9uIn19--9b7ba00c32731d121dd7ff5706d31cc3652788dd/pablo-garcia-saldana-lPQIndZz8Mo-unsplash.jpg 3x" decoding="async" loading="lazy">
</a>
</figure><em>Photo by </em><a href="https://unsplash.com/@garciasaldana_?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText"><em>Pablo García Saldaña</em></a><em> on </em><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/confusion?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText"><em>Unsplash</em></a></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/21331
2022-06-12T19:26:26Z
2022-06-12T19:34:34Z
You can’t have peaks without troughs
<div class="trix-content">
<div>Some days feel productive. For programmers, it’s when you get deep into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)">the zone</a> and come out the other side having pieced together a challenging puzzle. It can be sheer delight. For managers, it’s when you approach the ‘zone horizon’ (you’ll never get deep into the zone like programmers, that’s the deal) and focus on a chunky project for long enough to finally get it over the line, polish it off, tick that box. In my experience, achievements as a manager will never be as exhilarating as they are for programmers (that’s the deal), but you can still end a project on a delightful task completion dopamine high. <br><br>But you can't have peaks without troughs.<br><br>What follows an exerted effort can be exhaustion, which requires a period of recovery. This is as true for programmers, designers, or managers as it is for marathon runners. Most normal people wouldn't run another marathon the following day. <a href="https://www.eddieizzard.com/en/mandela-marathons">It's possible</a>, but you'll pay for it eventually.<br><br>Your mind, as well as your body, needs recovery. Without it comes injury or burnout. <br><br>Recovery days for tech workers can feel bitty, filled with busywork and distractions: faffing around organising your to-dos, sending emails/DMs/<a href="https://3.basecamp-help.com/article/90-pings">pings</a>, going down low-priority technical rabbit holes. This is never going to be particularly energising, but that’s the whole point of recovery. Your brain, like your running muscles, needs to relax and restore its natural order to be in the right condition for the next big thing. <br><br>These productivity fallow periods happen to me frequently and I used to find them frustrating (I just want to get stuff done dammit!), but I now see them as vital for a healthy work-life balance. They’re the cerebral equivalent of the post-run cool down. A virtual ice bath served with a protein shake. Embrace it.<br><br>The next time you’ve completed a work marathon, head down to the trough, take a long drink and relax. Spend a day getting organised, doing odd jobs, reading some of those articles you <a href="https://www.instapaper.com">Instapapered</a>, and refine your priorities while you mentally prepare for your next performance. <br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/21212
2022-06-06T20:34:53Z
2022-06-06T20:39:46Z
Think about it
<div class="trix-content">
<div>Listen to your gut. Trust your intuition. Lean on your experience. I think there’s a reasonable amount of truth in this when it comes to making decisions, and I can think of many examples where my initial instinct turned out to be a pretty good choice. Impulsive decisions can often be the best ones. <br><br>This isn’t the case for reactions<em>. </em>The verbal or written variety that is, not the physical ones which allow you to catch a glass you elbowed off the counter before it hits the floor. Physical reactions are remarkable, verbal ones are detrimental. <br><br>A decision is essentially “do this, or do that”, but it requires some level of thinking. A verbal reaction is an impulsive, knee-jerk defence mechanism from somewhere deep in your unconscious mind. Thinking not required.<br><br>Reactions are easy <em>because </em>they don’t require thinking. They’re kinda lazy. I know this because I’m kinda lazy and occasionally guilty of them, despite knowing full well that a reaction will probably be regrettable. It’s easier said than done, but the answer lies in your ability to turn that gut reaction into a <em>response</em>.<br><br>So pause. Take a breath. Count to ten. Take a minute. Sleep on it if you must. Think about it and respond. Just don’t react.<br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/19452
2022-03-09T12:50:25Z
2022-03-09T12:59:49Z
Why do we bother with social media?
<div class="trix-content">
<div>Concern and despair about the perils of social media come in waves, and there have been some stormy waters in the circles I inhabit this week. Why do we do this to ourselves?<br><br>I’ve had a love/hate relationship with social media since it’s incarnation. In fact, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the social aspect of the internet since about 1994. I used to inhabit <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet">Usenet</a> discussion boards and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat">IRC</a>, and these had similar effects and consequences as contemporary social media does today. Discussion boards were exciting to use at the time. Communicating with actual people from all corners of the planet about topics you were passionate about was a wonderful thing. I would look forward to logging in each morning and reading the new threads, and checking to see if anyone replied to my posts. The habit was addictive, just like social media. Occasionally, of course, some messages would be misconstrued and you’d be faced with challenging feedback or, worse, digital excommunication. In turn this would make you feel pretty terrible for a while, unless you were a heartless troll I suppose. Negative online interactions – whether on a mid-90s BBS or modern social network – can play on your mind and they can be difficult to correct. In some ways these challenges are actually good life lessons that you need to learn to navigate, but at the same time they can seriously diminish your mental heath. Is it really worth it?<br><br>I used Facebook for years. I used to like hearing about the escapades of others, and it allowed me to keep in touch with friends who had moved to the other side of the globe. There was a darker side though and the honeymoon period didn’t last long. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit">Brexit</a> was the tipping point for me. This was the most polarising of topics and people’s emotions were being fed by misinformation, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2336825X1802600305">post-truth politics</a> and even <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/jun/16/arron-banks-nigel-farage-leave-brexit-russia-connection?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">alleged state intervention</a>. I found myself in bitter, unwinnable arguments with family members on Facebook, which eventually spilled out offline so I ditched Facebook and never looked back. I don’t miss it (and, for the record, I was right about Brexit 🤪). <br><br>So why don’t I ditch the other ones too?<br><br>I’ve had a Twitter account since 2007. Twitter can be a fantastic source of real-time news if you feel that’s important, but if you look at it objectively it generally isn’t. It just wants you to think it is so you keep ‘engaging’. Listening to a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj9z/episodes/player">morning news bulletin</a> is more than sufficient for keeping up with what’s going on in the world, or reading a <a href="https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/the-guardian-editions/id452707806">daily edition of a <em>sensible</em> newspaper</a>. For industry-specific news such as the tech/software world, you can do the same – subscribe to some RSS feeds (they still exist!), or Substacks, or <a href="https://www.hey.com/world/">HEY Worlds</a>, or podcasts and stop feeling that real-time is necessary. It’s not, it’s just FOMO. On most levels Twitter is just the pits and <a href="https://world.hey.com/jorge/social-media-evilness-a32be7c7">it brings the worst out in people</a>. I’ve unfollowed everyone (ok, I still have some lists I read in digest form for the time being) and I plan to keep my distance. I don’t think it’s worth it. But can I bring myself to delete it entirely? FOMO.<br><br>I’m too old for Snapchat and TikTok but I’m on Instagram. I find it more pleasant than Facebook, but I have a private account and I only follow/am followed by a small number of IRL friends which makes it a lot quieter and for now the positives outweigh the negatives. I doubt I’d miss it if I binned it though. Maybe I should? I also have a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ollyheadey">public Instagram</a> for my photography hobby but I’m looking to move that to <a href="https://photos.headey.net">my own website</a>. It’s just a gallery after all. I don’t need the comforting confirmation of likes. <br><br>I find LinkedIn useful but only because it’s become the de-facto 21st century business phone directory. I don’t read the feed. Networking has proved really useful for me over the years from a work perspective, and I’ve used LinkedIn to connect with people who have subsequently helped me out, so I’m happy to stay on it despite <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_LinkedIn_hack">hacks</a> and its murky history of <a href="https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae726fe1462">dark patterns</a>. From what I gather it’s a great place to find new jobs as well, although how long this remains the case given increasingly heavy-handed recruiter practices remains to be seen. They face stiff competition from some <a href="https://circular.io/">hot</a> new <a href="https://otta.com">recruitment startups</a> as well. Times are changing.<br><br>Social media isn’t going anywhere. In fact it probably hasn’t peaked. If my kids’ generation are anything to go by it’s even more popular than ever. It’s no longer Facebook or Twitter, instead it’s WhatsApp, Snapchat, Tiktok and Discord (and probably others that I haven’t heard of yet). We need to continue to educate people about <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11464826/">the social dilemma</a>, constantly remind ourselves that we don’t need <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/aug/22/how-digital-media-turned-us-all-into-dopamine-addicts-and-what-we-can-do-to-break-the-cycle?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other https://www.theguardian.com/global/2021/aug/22/how-digital-media-turned-us-all-into-dopamine-addicts-and-what-we-can-do-to-break-the-cycle?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">that dopamine hit</a>, and train ourselves to resist the constant urge to check and scroll. This is so hard! Things that help (if you have Trappist-level will power) are removing apps from phones and only using a laptop when you must check or post something. And if you must have apps then turn off all notifications – you don’t need to know <em>right now</em>. <br><br>Despite these efforts, you’ll almost inevitably get drawn back in. The only permanent fix is to completely delete your accounts, but the pull of FOMO is often too strong. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. You’ve invested so much of your life in it, how could you possibly abandon it, even when you know your life will be better for it? The more we talk about the downsides of social media and its impact on society, the more we’ll reinforce this sunk cost to ourselves. Then, rather than trying to constantly navigate these endlessly stormy waters, we’ll finally be able to give our social media accounts a quiet but conclusive burial at sea. <br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/19329
2022-03-04T18:09:31Z
2022-03-06T19:35:28Z
Getting Real with a new job
<div class="trix-content">
<div>It’s been six weeks since I officially left FreeAgent and rather longer since my mind started wandering off into the dense forest of 'what next'. After a modest break of <em>trying</em> to do very little (I am very bad at this!) I find myself rolling up my sleeves, ready for something new. But what?</div><div><br></div><div>Over the years I’ve come to know a lot of founders, many of whom have sold their business and moved onto new things. I’ve been having a few chats recently, asking for people's thoughts, and unanimously the view is that after selling/leaving your business you should take <strong>six months</strong> off in order to ‘decompress’ before making any decision on what to do next. You need time to think, to read, to research interesting new sectors and explore ideas to seed your next big thing. This is the default assumption – you’ve been a founder, an entrepreneur, you know how to build successful businesses so you must start something new. It's in your blood!</div><div><br></div><div>I’ve thought about starting new ventures a lot over the last few years, ever since an 'exit' (such clinical language) seemed to be on the cards. I have an old Apple note called ‘future bizniz’ chock-full of ideas, some boring, some daft, some potentially interesting, some already done by others. I built <a href="https://blogline.co">a SaaS writing platform</a> (I recently turned it off) which was fun and scratched a programming itch, but it was unpopular and unprofitable. More recently I helped build a prototype B2B SaaS product with a friend which definitely had promise, but a few things got in the way and we both decided to move on. For a successful venture, you absolutely have to be in the right place at the right time.</div><div><br></div><div>Timing is everything.</div><div><br></div><div>I've also thought about working for other companies but it always seemed such an unlikely outcome. The concept is challenging for a founder. If you've built a company from the ground up the way you wanted, you pretty much believe it's the Greatest Company Ever™, which from your perspective it probably is. Consequently the pool of other companies that you feel you would ever want to work for is pretty shallow, if not bone dry. This is why most founders go and build another company rather than work for somebody else's. When you've presided at the top of the food chain, wouldn't it be too challenging to drop down a trophic level? Far better to take what you've learned and try and improve on it next time?</div><div><br></div><div>What if you take what you've learned and use it to help someone else's Greatest Company Ever™ rather than trying to do it all again yourself? If you can get over the ego bruising of diminished responsibility (this is a thing), it's a compelling option. You get to skip all those challenging years of uncertainty and doubt, and focus your energy immediately on helping a brilliant team of people build and scale super-popular products that already have huge numbers of happy customers!</div><div><br></div><div>This is the path I have decided is right for me.</div><div><br></div><div>There was only ever going to be one company. It's one that I've followed and admired for nearly two decades. I've read their books which inspired FreeAgent in multiple ways (randomly, I'm even quoted in one). I've used their products since 2006, and I love the technology they use (which also happens to be the foundation of FreeAgent). Just before Christmas I got myself into an email conversation with their technical co-founder about a new engineering leadership position that might be opening up. We had some long chats on Zoom and found a lot of alignment. I met some of the team (👋😊) and I wrote a novella on my thoughts on leadership. Then I took a break and waited.</div><div><br></div><div>This week I was offered the position and I'm stoked to announce that I'll be joining <a href="https://basecamp.com">Basecamp</a> as their Director of Engineering in a couple of weeks. I can't wait to get started! <br><br>Talk about perfect timing.</div><div><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/4821
2021-03-09T15:11:03Z
2021-03-09T15:16:07Z
Boosting the signal
<div class="trix-content">
<div>I had a day "out of the office" yesterday (not to be confused with the previous 360 consecutive days out of the physical office since March 13, 2020). I just had a day off, which shouldn't be a particularly big deal. If anything urgent happened I would have received a phone call, otherwise I should easily be able to catch up with things on my return. <a href="https://headey.net/free-your-gmail-inbox">I filter my email</a> so it's a pleasant place these days, even after a few days without checking. Slack, on the other hand, is a complete disaster zone. <br><br>In my head I have long since departed all channels that I don't need to be in, and I only inhabit a few high-value, high signal-to-noise ratio ones. In reality, I have one day off and I'm snow-blinded by dozens of attention-seeking hashtags and red dots which results in a laborious routine of submissively channel-clicking and back-scrolling through history, desperately scanning for signs of value among a brain-frying array of links, mentions and updates. By the time I get to the end of it all I've forgotten most of it and bookmarked a few things which I will forget about and never return to until it's far too late. Even if I do remember, I will be unlikely to find those few nuggets of gold that I'm sure I came across because I can't quite make the search show me what I want. It's a context-switching nightmare. Is this progress? Is this effective collaboration and communication? Is this "work happening"? I recommend pressing Shift-Esc and moving on. If it's that important, someone will let you know.<br><br>The few channels I thought I was a member of turned out to be <strong>157</strong>. At least I <em>think</em> so, because it's not something that Slack make particularly easy to find out. I guess highlighting this number to users might make them question the value Slack is adding to their day, and that question is probably not conducive to increasing weekly active users. I calculated it by browsing the channels then adding the <strong>Hide my channels</strong> filter if you wondered (972 channels – nearly 4 for every person!).<br><br></div><div> <figure class="attachment attachment--preview attachment--lightboxable attachment--png">
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</a>
</figure></div><div><br>I've <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25744928-deep-work">read a few books</a> on the topic of Deep Work over the years which are interesting enough, but they can ultimately be summarised as something like: "turn off notifications and focus on one task for at least an hour or two". I even read recently about <a href="https://www.eu-startups.com/2020/11/london-based-flown-lands-e1-3-million-to-launch-new-deep-work-as-a-service-platform-led-by-serial-tech-founder-alicia-navarro/">Deep Work as a Service</a>. Concentration is now so hard to achieve it has been commoditised and oursourced to third parties to solve. This is dystopian stuff. <br><br>Unless we act this will only get worse. Relentless group chat updates, back-to-back meetings leaving no time to work on the actual meeting actions, 15 people gathering in a room without a solid purpose. We've all been there. Leaders and managers in business have a real responsibility to do their own 'deep work' and concentrate on understanding the long-term costs of working this way. And that means the cost to employees as well as to the bottom line. <br><br>Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely real value in these tools, it's just that it's suffocated by noise. To make progress, we all need to figure out how to suppress the noise in our workplaces and boost the signal.<br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com
tag:world.hey.com,2005:World::Post/2078
2021-03-04T23:21:53Z
2021-12-01T22:08:26Z
Hello new blog that is likely doomed to live an unfulfilled existence
<div class="trix-content">
<div>I built <a href="https://blogline.co">a minimal blogging app</a> for fun last year, primarily as a way of applying WD-40 to my long-dormant Rails dev skills. I like it, but I <a href="https://headey.net">still don’t blog enough</a>. Unless you count unpublished drafts, of which I am a total ninja 🥷. <br><br>HEY have now launched <a href="https://world.hey.com">an even more minimal approach to blogging</a> (with the same ethos, which is nice – validation!). This is fantastic as a HEY customer, yet mildly frustrating as proprietor of a blogging app. Not because HEY World will eat my lunch (that’s not possible because a tiny handful of customers means I don’t have lunch in the first place), but because it means <strong>I want to use it</strong>. Damn you, curse of shiny new things. <br><br>I really like using HEY (<a href="https://headey.net/hey-vs-fastmail">my blog post about it</a> is by far the most popular thing I’ve written - good Google juice) so I guess I’ll now just flip flop between HEY World and my blog and see what happens. If you want to follow along, you can subscribe to this new blog below. You can also <a href="https://headey.net/contact">subscribe to my main blog</a> via email and RSS for good measure. <br><br></div>
</div>
Olly Headey
olly@hey.com