Rema Morgan-Aluko

Another amazing talk at #Config2024 by product leader from Linear. I loved how Nan Yu tackled a fundamental product challenge: the org chart. "An organization that designs a system will produce a design whose structure is a copy of that org's communication structure." - Conway's Law This really hits home. You can’t just copy a team structure that worked for someone else without understanding why it was designed that way and if it fits your org's needs. Your team setup should mirror the product you want to create. Start with the product you want to build: - Define the scope: Set clear boundaries and conditions, like different skill sets. - Share resources: Let people move between teams as needed. - Adapt and evolve: Disband teams when they’re no longer necessary. https://lnkd.in/gXCKqqyB

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The bigger my team and tech-stack grows, the more I try to identify and improve our curation of Internal Libraries. To.. 🌅 Efficiently and effectively spread the expertise of our devs 💡 Keep development intuitive for smooth cross-pollinating collab 🔐 Protect proprietary algorithms in a dynamic codebase 🛫 Boost code velocity Read more - https://lnkd.in/g86jb2yy Thoughts?! #softwareengineering #code

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This is a great short article on the current shortcomings of LLM AI and some critique of the discourse around it. Always nice to see a shout out to my favorite comparison, "the Chinese Room" thought experiment.

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Wondering how to support women at work? Here are 4 ways!

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In the early days of the internet, the W3C and few other organizations helped build the first Internet Standards so that the Web could foster it's own innovation & growth. Fast forward 30 years, I cannot believe we needed a law to get browsers and websites to agree on protecting your privacy by default... The internet should really be decentralized, and customer centrist by design. How did we ended up here?

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I have never considered the importance of minimizing layers and how that could maximize communication. While I have no management plans, I will broaden my audience when designing solutions for technical problems. Even if the additional person doesn’t help solve this problem, the learnings gained may enable them to solve the next problem.

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The 7Cs: The Connection Between One and One’s workplace When I reflect on my all past experiences in managing teams, I've observed that the 7 Cs play a crucial role in one's decision to stay long-term. There's also a discernible order of priority Compensation 💰 It starts with compensation and revisions, which define the value of a one's contributions. It is foundational, demonstrating that efforts are recognized and appreciated, and keep trust intact Company 📈 The growth prospects of the company and it's office location play a crucial role Credible Leaders 🏢 The leader’s credibility matters immensely. One wants to work with a leader who is trustworthy, reliable, mentor, inspire Culture 🌍 Culture is crucial. A positive culture, means an inclusive environment where everyone feels heard and valued. Whether it's a collaborative spirit or a go-getter attitude, a strong culture keeps one engaged and dedicated Career 🚀 One need to see a future within the company Coaching 🎓 Great leaders act as mentors and coaches. When team members receive support and guidance from leaders, they generally like to stay and grow within the organization Customer 🤝 The impact being created attributes to decision making It’s about fostering an environment where one want to stay and grow. As a leader, it stays as top most priority on how to take care of your team so that team take care of customer in the best possible way which is ultimately priority.

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🥂Happy 25-Year Anniversary of gainous.com! On April 19, 1999, I registered the gainous.com domain and started my very first personal web site. It looked a lot different then and has gone through many iterations over the past 2-1/2 decades. It started out as just a collection of text-based hyperlinks linking to geeky websites.🤓 Today, it is a place where my wife and I share our adventures with you. Check out '𝑳𝒆𝒔 & 𝑳𝒊𝒍𝒊'𝒔 𝑨𝒅𝒗𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔' at: https://www.gainous.com Here's some state-of-the-internet trivia from the year 1999: • Traditional dial-up modems were the primary means of accessing the internet, but cable and DSL were beginning to emerge. Cable was said to reach speeds of 10Mbps, while ADSL could hit 6Mbps. • 41% of adults are using the internet and the weather is the most popular online news attraction. • AOL launches AOL 4.0 and inundates American homes with CD-ROM mailers. AOL membership jumps from 8 million to 16 million members. • Yahoo! acquires GeoCities for $3.6 billion. https://www.gainous.com

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Do you have a name that nobody can pronounce? I know I do! Some common mispronunciations of my last name are Chuckooski, Shujlewski, and even once a Crunchlooski! I usually try to spell it phonetically for people to make it easy: Cha-Clue-Ski. My mother-in-law tells people “Chuck and Lou like to Ski”. My daughter says to just sneeze and then add a “ski” at the end! The thing is, I don’t really expect anyone to pronounce it correctly, and it doesn’t bother me if someone gets it wrong…. I know that isn’t the case for everyone with an unusual name, though. What do you think - does it bother you when people get your name wrong? Do you have any tricks for helping someone pronounce your name correctly?

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One of the first things you learn as a manager is to give positive feedback publicly and constructive feedback privately. Is this always true? Giving positive feedback publicly can help lift up a team - it’s a great motivator, and helps everyone on the team understand what success looks like. However, some individuals prefer to be recognized privately. So you need to know your individual team members, and respect their wishes. Constructive feedback is almost always better in private, so that you can really talk with an individual, and avoid making everyone on the team uncomfortable. But, in a small and extremely trusted group of co-workers, working through a live example together can help everyone learn without singling anyone out. How do you like to give feedback? #constructivecriticism #feedback #managertips

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Just finished the learning path “Build Your Generative AI Productivity Skills with Microsoft and LinkedIn”! #generativeai #artificialintelligencefordesign #artificialintelligenceforbusiness #productivityimprovement #promptengineering

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Am I really good enough? Do I really belong in this position? Will I be able to live upto expectations? Will I ever feel confident in my abilities? And many more such questions plague people who go through imposter syndrome. Ironically this feeling of self-doubt impacts even people who are highly accomplished. Here are some quick tips I learned in a session conducted at one of my workplaces and these tips have helped me a lot. ·     Acknowledge the feeling - stop fighting the feeling of not belonging, embrace them. ·     Identify triggers - Once you acknowledge the feeling, you can unravel the beliefs that are holding you back. ·     Acknowledge your accomplishments - Do not undermine your achievements. Keep a brag file which you can go back to time to time. ·     Avoid comparisons – Your journey is unique. Refrain from comparing yourself to others, we only see a select part of others journey, the part that they choose to show to external world! What you have achieved and the journey you have taken is unique to you. ·     Reach out & share your feelings - Irrational thoughts and beliefs tend to fester when they are not talked about. Talking to your friends / peers can provide relief and perspective. ·     And sometimes it's also important to do a reality check - assess your abilities and aspirations. Write down what you are good at, define where you want to be. Start building your personal brand ! When I saw this post and heard the statement "What scares you, can only help to provoke greatness", it offers such a positive perspective on leveraging discomfort to drive self-improvement. It is important to stop fighting your feelings. Instead lean into those feelings and embrace them as fuel for growth. #growthmindset #leadershipjourney #joyofsharing

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If anyone tried to e-file their taxes with H&R Block desktop software, over 24 hours (Sunday, April 14th until midday April 15th), they would have failed. https://lnkd.in/gycJmDDN Let me break this down for you - this is a CLASSIC n-phase commit issue. I would NOT be surprised if they are using threads to meet this need and of course, they are failing spectacularly! Why? Because as much as I love threads, I have been using threads since 1994 or earlier, large-scale, heterogeneous systems architecture is never to be built with threads! Threads mean you hope you can control the spanning and the response times. Otherwise, the countless waiting threads chew up cycles, timing, and the overall machines, until you have system starvation. The proper way to manage unbounded interactions is to use non-blocking (event-based) architectures. This allows the backend to manage the many disparate systems it needs to interact with and ensure they are completed and the customer knows the final outcome. I stress, the last point - you can have the best backend system out there but unless the customer interaction model is equal to the backend model, the customer will not know what happened. If the backend is trying to do many things in an async manner but uses a sync user interaction model then the customer does not know what happened. The customer may be trying to e-file their taxes, which is at least two steps, charge the card and file the taxes with at least one government system, maybe more. If that interaction on the backend is done async, and then it fails, the customer's interaction model will also fail, and now the customer is left in a place where they do not know what happened! Many customers, in this case with HRBlock, actually had their e-file work, but they never knew it! Eventually, the Federal Government emailed them saying that the taxes were filed. Which is a horrible user interaction. The main point here is that all complex user-facing interactions on the backend need to have a user model where the customer knows what happened and if they can try again! Failure is NOT an IF it is just a WHEN. One MUST build their architecture embracing failure. In the end, persistent orchestration, using things like Airflow of Amazon Steps, along with idempotency is the only way to ensure that the customer will get the outcome they desire. System failures is expected, systems not giving the customer a final understanding of where they stand on such important transactions is a failure. If the user experience is clear in stating that the user's request is being handled and then the backend fails, but the user experience is not tied - directly - to that backend, then that one level of abstraction allows the experience to do retries and poll for the state of the backend's final outcome. Best wishes to all for success and much better outcomes than my annoyances this week!

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Have you heard about the TikTok trend called “micro-feminism”? Micro-feminism are tiny acts that people do every day to contradict stereotypes. Here are a few examples: saying “hey girls” instead of “hey guys” when addressing a group, women holding doors open for men, or referring to all animals/inanimate objects as “she”. I do make a conscious effort not to say “guys” when addressing a group of people (although I still slip up from time to time) - but I usually say “everyone” instead of “girls”. It seems more inclusive for all genders. Will these acts solve all of life’s inequalities? Probably not. But, it doesn’t seem like it is hurting anything, and could be a little bit fun!? Do you want to give micro-feminism a try? #feminism #tiktok #genderstereotypes

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We released a new update of our Visual Studio Code Java extension. Go try it! Bunch of new improvements and already supporting JDK 23 Early Access builds as the extension is directly leveraging javac. https://lnkd.in/g8BKsNjS #java #IDE #OpenJDK #VSCode

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Through our daily interactions with retail leaders, we’ve gained a perspective on a few of the challenges and opportunities facing the industry, and we've summarized them here👇 "Retail industry insights: trends to watch in 2024" https://lnkd.in/eK9-JxKC #retailinsights #retailtrends

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While everyone wants to share content and uses a lot of AI-based tools, it’s important to share this piece: - Your content might be „slop“ 😬 https://lnkd.in/gQVCCDJz > But I’m increasingly of the opinion that sharing unreviewed content that has been artificially generated with other people is rude. So at this point is I would extend and say unreviewed AI-content isn’t good but „rude by default“.

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