johnkchow
Joined 15 years ago
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99
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66
Member since
Aug 19
Recent submissions
Comment · 7 years ago
The hardest part during the transition is to give up doing what you love and excel at (coding) and instead doing something foreign and way more nebulous. But every time you feel that urge to go back to writing code, you need to remind yourself that as a manager, your primary goal is to have a multiplicative effect in the organization, and that starts with not only improving your team’s productivity, but coaching each and every member on your team to have great judgement and make the right decisions that balances the technical and business needs. And to have your team make the right decisions, you as the manager need to equip them with as much business context as possible and empower them to run as fast as they can.
I highly recommend reading High Output Management by Andy Grove. It’s written decades ago for the chip business, but it’s personally one of the most impactful books and really cemented for me the ideas I’ve laid out above.
I wish you luck! It’s not an easy process, but with work it can be incredibly rewarding to see people succeed and grow under your watch.
Comment · 8 years ago
Just like many things in life, its all about building that habit in the first place. The most important thing is to be fiercely disciplined when it comes to carving out dedicated time for the task. Start off small: maybe 30 minutes a week to read new articles, every week. Don’t ever miss it. When that becomes easy and part of your routine, make it 40. So forth and so on until it’s something you don’t even have to think about.
Building up your habit is a long process, and it can’t be rushed. Don’t start off too big (i.e. start off spending 8 hours on a project in one day). I mean you can, but if it feels like a drag then you’re biting off more than you can chew. Prioritize on sustainability and consistency; otherwise you’ll unconsciously tell yourself that it’s too hard and set yourself up for failure.
EDIT 1: I realize the post is more about having feeling inspired/creative vs wanting to learn, so my thoughts may not be answering OP’s original question.
EDIT 2: I think a better way to frame the question is how to bring creative ideas to reality. If that’s the primary goal, building up the habit of trying to apply our ideas is IMO really important. Otherwise, ideas will just remain ideas.
Comment · 8 years ago
I’d caution against jumping to conclusions. The author did say that he was emotionally shut down and wasn’t intaking any of the coaching sessions. It’s very possible that the CEO/Coach knew that it wasn’t going to work out, but it’s also very possible that they wanted to see the author succeed and prove them wrong.
Comment · 8 years ago
I'm the Engineering Manager for the Reviews team at Reflektive (performance management SAAS), and I have to say that this article rings true with me personally and aligns with our company's mission. The recent trend when it comes to performance management is that companies a) no longer want the feedback process to be centrally driven and b) feedback between managers and direct reports should be given on a more frequent cadence. The latter point is especially challenging, because no software out there can magically can change an individual's behavior; the company culture[1] has to exist first to foster it.
Every company is different, but for some traditional companies Reflektive works with them to initially roll out Performance Reviews because companies have dedicated budget for it. Then, once they're comfortable with our tools, our Customer Success team partners with them to craft a roll-out plan for our "Check Ins" product, which is a lightweight feedback tool intended on used every 3 months. For Check Ins, it's meant to be purely about development; at Reflektive, our Check Ins contain no performance rating scores nor do we use it for compensation (we have a separate process for that).
The good news is that a LOT of companies, ranging from small startups to large 50k-employee enterprise companies, actually want to shift towards a more employee-driven model. Our team's number one priority right now is to empower employees/managers to own their own feedback process and to increase the frequency of feedback between managers and their teams. I'm super excited about what's coming down the pipeline!
[1]https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1df5MALZKZU6lOeIXUiO-...
Comment · 8 years ago
I'm the Engineering Manager for the Reviews team at Reflektive (performance management SAAS), and I have to say that this article rings true with me personally and aligns with our company's mission. The recent trend when it comes to performance management is that companies a) no longer want the feedback process to be centrally driven and b) feedback between managers and direct reports should be given on a more frequent cadence. The latter point is especially challenging, because no software out there can magically can change an individual's behavior; the company culture[1] has to exist first to foster it.
Every company is different, but for some traditional companies Reflektive works with them to initially roll out Performance Reviews because companies have dedicated budget for it. Then, once they're comfortable with our tools, our Customer Success team partners with them to craft a roll-out plan for our "Check Ins" product, which is a lightweight feedback tool intended on used every 3 months. For Check Ins, it's meant to be purely about development; at Reflektive, our Check Ins contain no performance rating scores nor do we use it for compensation (we have a separate process for that).
The good news is that a LOT of companies, ranging from small startups to large 50k-employee enterprise companies, actually want to shift towards a more employee-driven model. Our team's number one priority right now is to empower employees/managers to own their own feedback process and to increase the frequency of feedback between managers and their teams. I'm super excited about what's coming down the pipeline!
[1]https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1df5MALZKZU6lOeIXUiO-...
Comment · 10 years ago
It'd be helpful to have more context about your development experience. I've done some iOS development in the past, and as spapas82 mentioned once you understand the core Android concepts it's easy to pick up. The docs are good, and there's a lot of tutorials and small articles to get you going.
If you've never done native mobile app development (e.g. you only have background in web dev), then regardless which platform you start off with, the initial learning curve will be a bit steep. Most APIs are "lower level" than the web counterparts and there's more ceremony to piece things together since you're working in such a constrained environment (memory, CPU, battery, network speeds, inconsistent internet access, disk space).
All that said, I think Android is a _taaaad_ easier to start off with vs iOS if you're a web dev. There's the GC, the Activity model is similar to web pages and their View XML abstraction is not that far off from HTML/CSS.
Comment · 11 years ago
I've been in a very similar situation before (one of the first engineer hires in a company that grew to about 15 people when I left). It's great that you're loyal and conscientious (you won't have any problems finding a job).
The first thing you need to do is sit down with your CEO and have an honest conversation about how you feel. Come prepared with an outline of all your grievances and be very specific about what changes that you need to see to be made. This includes compensation and hours. These days early stage startups are offering super competitive salaries, and it's more than fair to ask.
Having this conversation gives him a chance to do you and your coworkers right. Best case scenario: he totally empathizes and has a change in heart, and the company as a whole benefits.
But you have to be prepared for the worst (which will probably happen): not only will he offended by your honesty, he'll come out attacking your character. These kinds of CEO are just emotionally clueless, and nothing you say or do will change their minds. In this situation, you must be fully prepared to walk away from this company. By staying you'll be enabling his behavior and you have nobody to blame but yourself for being in a hostile environment. By leaving, you not only will find a better opportunity (and you will), you hopefully will give the CEO a wake up call.
When I put in my 2 weeks notice, I got blasted and put my founders and fellow engineers in a tough spot. But a lot of good came out of me leaving. Immediately after my 2 weeks notice, the CEO pulled everyone aside and gave everyone raises which were near market rates. The founders also became more aware of how employees felt. A few other coworkers who were as miserable as I was eventually left the company too, and they're all in better, happier places.
There will be some people who will see you as leaving people behind and making things tougher for them. Over time those individuals will come around and see that whatever decision you made, you made it for the right reasons. The most important thing to keep in mind while you go through this: your top priority is your physical, mental, and (most important) emotional health. Don't listen to what other people say.
Good luck with all this. This will be a tough journey, but if you keep your chin up, I guarantee that this will be the best thing that you'll ever do.
Comment · 11 years ago
My parents immigrated to America in the 80's from China, and they simply thought that a college degree was the gateway to social mobility. They never thought that the skills learned in college would matter that much. Most parents in my community thought the same way. Most parents didn't speak English, so my generation was further isolated from the job market demands. Going to college, my friends and I had little idea of what we wanted to, not because we were indecisive but because we simply didn't know what jobs we could do. I saw many friends study history, music and foreign languages, and they struggled after graduating because they realized that their degrees aren't guarantees for good jobs.
The struggles weren't due to lack of desires or efforts. In my opinion, it's the disconnect between the perceived value in education and the actual skills needed for the work place. Raising awareness, such as vocational classes in high school and required internships as a prerequisite for college graduation, would have been tremendous for my generation. At the very least, it would have helped us realize that there's this gap between what we're learning in school versus what's actually needed in the work force.
Comment · 11 years ago
This interoperability-focused approach brought the obvious question of adopting an existing open-source rendering engine such as WebKit. While there were some advantages, upon further investigation it was not the right path forward for two important reasons. First, the Web is built on the principle of multiple independent, yet interoperable implementations of Web standards and we felt it was important to counter movement towards a monoculture on the Web. Second, given the engineering effort required, we found that we could deliver an interoperability focused engine to customers significantly faster if we started from our own engine (especially if unshackled from legacy compatibility concerns), rather than building up a new browser around an open-source engine. We will continue to look at open source and shared source models where it makes sense and look forward to sharing more details in coming posts.
This is a powerful paragraph from the article. I'm all for competition, and if they actually produce the next great browser, that'll just mean better browsers overall (and probably even better tooling for us devs). I'm a bit skeptical whether they can pull it off, but at least I have a good feeling that they're out to prove us all wrong.
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