mlevison, 8 hours ago to random

Forced return to the office is a train wreck and the problems are compounding https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/the-fallout-of-the-forced-return-to-office/

acf, 4 days ago to random

I wonder if Napier University computer library still has old copies of JOOP and Dr Dobbs. I loved the random stuff I’d find just thumbing through old issues.

mlevison, 4 days ago to random

#TekSavvy Fibre installed to replace Bell. I should celebrating, instead my WiFi performance is noticeably worse around the whole house. Ex my office used to get ping: 4ms, 600Mbps down and 500Mbs up. Now I get 8, 300 and 158. The Adorn 854v6 modem isn't delivering a fraction of what it should.

mlevison, 4 days ago to random

Make it reversible, when we make it possible for someone to back out of something we're increasing the #Trialability. The Agile community seems to have this one down pat. We tend to call it an experiment. We ask could we try this as an experiment for 4-6 weeks and gather data on the outcomes?

#InfluenceAtWork
The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

mlevison, 4 days ago to random

10,000 Hrs of Practice will make you...

I call this the Malcolm Gladwell myth, since it his book the popularized and distorted already questionable research.

As usual, I'm not a psychologist. I don't have a PhD in any science. I do coach Agile and Scrum. I also explode the balloons I call NeuroMyths. As a general rule, if Gladwell writes about it, tread carefully.

In "Outliers", Gladwell suggests that completing 10,000 hrs in their chosen discipline will excel.

#NeuroMyths 1/5

mlevison, 5 days ago to random

Reduce Upfront Costs, is one way to improve #Trialability. I found it interesting to learn, people value a savings of $5.99 with free shipping, over a $10 discount on the product itself. Free shipping resolved uncertainty, where a discount for even more money does not.

I guess I'm an odd duck, I look at the total cost of ownership

The Catalyst - Jonah Berger
#InfluenceAtWork

mlevison, 6 days ago to random

#UncertaintyTax when circumstances are uncertain our brains press pause. An experiment that Berger cites: students were offered a cheap vacation and placed in three groups: pass, fail and unknown. The pass and fail groups both wanted the vacation. The uncertain group didn't want the vacation as much. Yet eventually they will either be in the pass or fail group, so their interests should be the same. The Uncertainty caused them to press pause.

#InfluenceAtWork
The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

viticci, 7 days ago to random

I couldn’t get an iPad Pro long enough in advance to publish a review today.

Instead, I finally took the time to prepare something else: a comprehensive story about all the problems of iPadOS.

Enjoy ☕️

Not an iPad Pro Review: Why iPadOS Still Doesn’t Get the Basics Right https://www.macstories.net/stories/not-an-ipad-pro-review/

matthewskelton, 7 days ago to random

"The fraud of the cryptocurrency bubble was far more pervasive than the fraud in the dotcom bubble, so much so that without the fraud, there’s almost nothing left. A few programmers were trained in Rust, a very secure programming language that is broadly applicable elsewhere. But otherwise, the residue from crypto is a lot of bad digital art and worse Austrian economics."

Cory Doctorow on the AI bubble

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

mlevison, 7 days ago to random

Everett Rogers - Diffusions of Innovation - one of the most cited science books ever. It's the source of Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, ...

In this book Everett, that up to 87% of the variance in adoption of an innovation (idea or product) comes from the trialability. Trialability is an odd, word. It just means if our ideas can't be easily tried. They will be ignored.

Next time you want an improvement at work make it sure it can be tried easily.

#InfluenceAtWork

grimalkina, 8 days ago to random

"When people are treated unfairly, for example, when they are not allowed to have input into decisions that will affect them, or when they are not given good explanations of why certain decisions were made, the symbolic message may be that the organization does not think highly enough of them (to provide input or to be given good explanations)."

• Brockner & Sherman, 2019
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191308520300058

mlevison, 10 days ago to random

#UncertaintyTax #InfluenceAtWork - How much would you pay for $50 gift card at a local retailer that must used in two weeks. On average people were willing to pay $45. Now offer a lottery ticket with 50% chance of winning a $50 and 50% chance of winning $100 Gift card. We would expect the perceived value to go up or stay the same. In fact it dropped to $16.

To reduce the #UncertaintyTax at work, offer experiments and make bigger decisions reversible.

The Catalyst - Jonah Berger

mlevison, 11 days ago to random

Bell Canada, how low can you go? Hours ago, I signed up to switch my Fibre internet service to TekSavvy. A few minutes go I got a call from Bell, offering to lower my rate. So apparently lower rates are only a good business practice when it hurts smaller players.

Gross. #BellCanada

cc: @andykm -- I'm assuming this doesn't rise to the level of a CRTC complaint.

mlevison, 11 days ago to random

#InfluenceAtWork
It's not a top ten list and as you will see, I'm not yet David Letterman. I thought it would be fun to cover some of the many many reasons we fail to get what we want. (Cue the Stones?)

As you will see, smiling on camera is still a skill I'm learning.

https://buff.ly/4dDrQfJ

mlevison, 12 days ago to random

• Equal Weighting for answers - as above some things may matter very little to you as an individual, yet the answer will be used to place you in a category
• Scales can't be used to compare with other people - two people might both score as 'D' Dominant, that doesn't mean they would have the same level of dominance.
• There isn't a standard test
• Originally designed in the early 1900's to assess the "Mental Energy" of army recruits

2/3 #DISC #NeuroMyths

mlevison, 12 days ago to random

I'm not a psychologist. I don't have a PhD. I do explode the balloons I call #NeuroMyths. DISC (and its friend Myers-Briggs) are among the ones I have the most fun with.

My notes are a summary of: https://thepracticalpsych.com/blog/disc-personality-types and a few others that have since fallen off the web. (If you need I have PDF archived copies - DEVONThink :-)

Weaknesses

• Forced Choice Questioning - must choose a position on a line for things that might not matter for that person

1/3 #DISC #NeuroMyths

mlevison, 12 days ago to random

#Influence at Work - Asking someone in leadership to take the perspective of the development team will be a challenge if that leader doesn't have prior development experience. We need to establish common ground on a relevant subject. We need to find a shared experience that that is relevant to our work. Example if the problem is frequent interruptions to our dev team, then find ask them about the effect of interruptions on their own focus work. Ask open ended questions and truly listen.

davidthewid, 13 days ago to random

A post in which the cohost of NYT's flagship tech podcast describes "simulating people" via "digital twins" as a "credible" and "solid" use of chatbots, a "good answer to the question of what generative AI is for":

https://mastodon.social/@caseynewton/112396896352462291

I don't have access to the paywalled longer article, if anyone does, I'd be interested if his claims are any less hype-y in context.